Year In Review: Pinetown local turned R389 worth of seeds into an international business

Take a listen as she shares her incredible journey with Stacey and J Sbu:

As the quote goes: "When one door closes, another one opens."

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We don't always see the door that's opening for us and instead, we keep looking at the door that has been closed and we choose to focus on that.

Not Ntando Thabethe.

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Ntando lives in Pinetown, KZN, and she used to have a stable job in mechanical engineering sales.

Unfortunately, her company decided to move their premises, from Pinetown to Johannesburg. This would mean that Ntando would have to uproot her family and move too if she wanted to keep the job.

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Family commitments kept her from relocating, she was left unemployed and her husband was now the sole provider of the house.

Ntando realised that a plan needed to be made. She had to help feed her family and she would have never guessed that her very basic plan would turn into a fully-fledged business!

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The journey that started at learning a new skill is continuously growing and becoming more successful.

While Ntando was unemployed, she looked at her garden and saw it in a new light. She saw it in a way that she had never before, while she was employed.

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Where she had previously been too busy to look after the garden, she now had more than enough time to put some love and care into it and since it had now been bothering her, that's exactly what she decided to do.

One day her husband had given her money to go and do her hair. Ntando returned home that day and to her husband's surprise, she had not done anything to her hair.

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Instead, she bought R389 worth of seeds, planted peppers, spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower, and when the harvest was too much to just feed her family, she started selling the rest of the produce to the members of her community.

In a few months, everyone knew about Ntando's garden and her delicious produce, even a local Pick n Pay who was having difficulty with a pepper provider, came knocking and asked her to supply their store.

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But she was also running a farm in her suburban backyard. Not ideal.

Finally, she requested approval from her local municipality to set up a tunnel farm in her backyard, the application was approved and she was able to increase her farming capacity.

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Two years later, Elite Crop is a fully operational business with many clients, including providing eights tonnes of frozen vegetables to Oxford Fresh Market's three stores in Durban and she has just signed a contract to supply dried production to a partner in Dubai.

She has also been able to provide 40 people with jobs and they are now in the process of conducting interviews in order to hire another 40 people.

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Even though she has been feeling the pressure of the pandemic, Ntando has faced obstacles before and overcome them.

There's no doubt that she will do it again and continue thriving!

Main image courtesy of Elite Crop Foods/YouTube