Cashing In On The Expanding Plant Extracts Market

Planting alternative crops for the extracts or essential oil market can be profitable, but it’s no easy road to riches. Pietersarel de Bruyn of Herbs Aplenty spoke to Glenneis Kriel about the opportunities and difficulties of this rapidly growing agricultural niche.

Elmarie de Bruyn, a software programmer and later interior decorator, and her husband, Kobus, moved from Johannesburg to the Cape in the early 1990s. Here, they rented the old Bienne Donné farmyard near Simondium, and started promoting South African cuisine.

Pietersarel de Bruyn, Elmarie’s son, explains that at the time, most restaurants still focused on European rather than uniquely South African dishes. Herbs were expensive, and his mother had always preferred using fresh produce in her cooking, so she started a small herb garden to supply the kitchen.

Before long, people from all over started flocking to her for plant material, resulting in the birth of Herbs Aplenty.

The area planted to herbs started out at less than a hectare, and this was gradually increased to 6ha, by which time the family had also begun experimenting with essential oils and other offbeat crops.

The family’s interest in essential oils was triggered when Elmarie arrived home from a trip to Provence in southeastern France with a book about lavender.

“Essential oil production was almost non-existent in South Africa, so we had to pay plenty of school fees to get where we are today. For example, we once had to replant an entire land after planting the wrong variety,” he recalls.

Today, the family produces a wide spectrum of organic crops, ranging from geranium, lavender and Khoi goes to bay leaf and rosemary, on its farm, Goedgegewe, near Tesselaarsdal. They are grown primarily for the extracts market.

The De Bruyns also supply non-organic crops in partnership with five farmers. Their combined production covers an area of about 120ha, making the partnership one of the biggest extracts producers in the country.