South Africa has emerged as the world’s leading producer of macadamia nuts, with a forecasted harvest of 95,500 tonnes this season, according to Alex Whyte, director of the Green Farms Nut Company a family business founded 34 years ago by his mother, Jill Whyte.
“It’s probably been the case for quite a lot of farmers that their growth ambitions were curtailed when the price literally halved in 2022, but I think confidence is coming back to the industry. The price has recovered since last year, and this year, farmers generally will make profits.”
A silver lining to the price trough of recent years was that macadamia nuts became affordable to more people (the laws of supply and demand in action, he remarks) which is just as well, because South Africa’s macadamia volumes will double over the next seven to ten years and the industry is going to need more homes for the whole crop.
Green Farms Nut Company is responsible for between 20% and 30% of South Africa’s macadamia crop from the 450 farmers delivering their nuts to their Levubu, Nelspruit, and Ramsgate to be cracked.
July will bring clarity on U.S. tariffs
“We’ve always been quite heavily focused on kernel and cracking the nuts and selling the kernel, as opposed to just drying and bagging back in shell. We’ve traditionally sold about 20% to 30% to the U.S., probably about 20% to Europe, and the same, roughly, to China. And then the rest of the world, mostly the Middle East and other Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, make up the balance.”
The free trade with the United States they’ve enjoyed has been replaced with a 10% tariff. In July, they’ll be hearing whether that might change again, and it just goes to show, he remarks, the wisdom of not being over-reliant on a single market. “We’re hopeful that the tariff will remain at 10% at the most, maybe even less, just purely because a lot of American food manufacturers are reliant on macadamias as their raw material for their macadamia products. They don’t produce enough macadamias domestically; there are some grown in Hawaii, but it’s quite small volumes, so they are very reliant on imported macadamia.”
Green & Gold Macadamias
Whyte says that Green & Gold Macadamias, the marketer and consolidator in which the Green Farms Nut Company is a stakeholder, has been pivotal in creating new opportunities. Through engagement with food manufacturers and their product developers, new avenues for macadamias – a breakfast cereal, say – are carved out, and Green & Gold Macadamias guarantees a continuous supply.
Green & Gold Macadamias markets the crops of not only Green Farms Nut Company’s growers, but also those of Maclands with orchards in South Africa, Malawi, and Kenya, the Thyolo Nut Company in Malawi, Queen Nut Macadamia in Brazil, and Suncoast Gold Macadamias in Australia.
The local market has been undervalued, Whyte observes, but within the company, their domestic provision has grown from almost nothing to about 5%.
“One of the big success stories is Buttanut, a company that started off with nut butters. Now they do a macadamia vegan milk, and they’re expanding their range to rusks, chocolate-coated macadamia. Another success story is Wedgwood Nougat.”
At the recent International Nut and Dried Fruit Council, the barbecue briquette of compressed macadamia shells won sustainability recognition. “One of the things we are trying to do is make sure we don’t waste any part of the macadamia crop. Their shells are so hard, and it’s completely sustainable.”
