By Greg Ardé

Rob Hoatson is a man utterly consumed by his endeavours, which, if they continue to succeed, could prove a model for agri-businesses in a critical sector of the KZN economy.

The 43-year-old farmer is part of a clan of brothers whose diversified agri-business was started by their 69-year-old father, Lawrence. Hoatson senior, a diesel mechanic from Kokstad, built a national group that now employs over 3 000 people and has interests in timber, beef, sheep, nuts and beverages. Brothers Sean, Rob, John and Matt are all involved in the business that owns thousands of hectares of timber farms in KZN and Mpumalanga.

The foundation of Lawrence Hoatson’s business is sawmills, although he only got into that in 1992 after running an agricultural transport business which he started when he quit a full-time job as a mechanic with Ford and bought an old truck. Rob says the brothers remember sitting beside their dad in the cab while he trucked sugarcane and timber to mills in southern KZN.

In 1992 Tekwani was launched when Lawrence bought a sawmill to feed his transport business. Tekwani now processes 400 000 cubic metres annually and primarily supplies timber for roof trusses from Pietermaritzburg, Newcastle and Piet Retief. In 2001 the Hoatsons bought Normandien, a 10 000-hectacre farm near Newcastle where they operate the smallest of their sawmills. While the purchase of the farm, set up against the Klein Drakensberg, was chiefly to provide timber, in 2012 a massive fire there prompted the Hoatsons to extend their horizons.

The fire coincided with a chance encounter between Rob and a local lady, the relative of one of their staff, who crowed about the quality of the pure water drawn from Normandien’s mountain springs. A host of geohydrological surveys revealed just how sweet, pure and vast the water supply was, prompting Rob to do a financial feasability study that he presented to his father and his brothers. This was the upshot of it: South Africa’s water infrastructure is nearly broken (in storage, purification and distribution) so they spent R50-million setting up a bottling plant at their Normandien springs.

Lawrence asked Rob: “Do you know what you are doing my boy?”

To which his son replied: “No Dad, but I’m going to find out.”

And he did – in the process creating Thirsti, a business that seven years later turns over around R500-million a year. Thirsti is now the largest private label beverage supplier to Woolworths, supplying 70% of its demand, not including dairy and fruit juices; and employs around 250 people who work out of a 20 000m² state-of-the-art factory built from scratch.

The business has been growing at around 40% a year and by volume is the country’s second biggest bottled water company after Aquelle. At peak production it bottles four million litres a week. Rob says he has not had time to reflect on Thirsi’s runaway success because it has been all absorbing.

An injudicious summary of the plethora of challenges includes constructing a plant; sourcing and operating sophisticated European equipment; and finding customers and distributing to them. The company’s big break came from Woolworths after Rob managed to convince one of their buyers to visit the plant.

“I went to their head office and said I’m a forester and I’d like to supply you with water, but please, you have to come and visit our farm. There is no way I can share the magic of what we have to offer you in a presentation in an office in Cape Town.”

The exacting requirements of Woolworths are partly attributable to Thirsti’s growth and a total investment to date of R300-million in slick blow moulding machines, bottling lines and canning and labelling capacity.

The factory is 10 000m² and there is a 10 000m² warehouse, which in the main was built by Themba Dlamini, a 36-year-old local put through school by the Hoatsons. Rob says home- grown empowerment is integral to their business, and has meant they have controlled costs and built solid foundations.

“We are not scared to get the specialists in. For the construction of our plant we got engineers and architects to do what we couldn’t. But we built it exactly to our specifications at a fraction of market cost.

“Themba started his working life as a gardener. Now he can read a set of plans and can construct top quality buildings. “At the end of the day that’s what business is all about: growing one another.”

Thirsti has a fleet of 20 superlinks that services retail distribution centres situated roughly equidistant from the farm. Newcastle’s strategic location – almost in the centre of the eastern part of the country – means it is a four-hour truck drive to major centres.

The family’s history in transport helps, and Rob studied economics and logistics at university.

Rob runs the Thirsti business while Sean and John oversee Tekwani, the timber business. Matt is the CFO and Lawrence is CEO.

Agri-business demands a long-term view – it takes 20 years before a pine tree can be felled and reliance on one crop can be crippling because of the vagaries of the market, weather and disease.

“If you don’t plan and do your homework it can be disastrous.” Rob says almost every business the Hoatsons have got into has been born of adversity. “Every move in our business has been a step to mitigate risk or respond to a challenge and often that results in another business on its own.”

The sawmills arose to meet the transport need, and Thirsti to offset over-reliance on timber. And there have been other, remarkable, diversifications. Beef farming is one. The Hoatsons invested in cattle to essentially act as lawn mowers and graze the flammable veld between the timber where grass was growing dangerously long and presented a big fire hazard. Every year 1 000 grass-fed beef are sold to Woolworths.

Another internal business is the manufacture of pallets produced at the sawmills from smaller trees harvested from the timber plantation.

This “thinning” process is done to maximise the growth of bigger trees and the early harvested timber is used to make pallets needed by Thirsti to pack and move bottles. Once used these are sold to Chep.

“We try not to waste anything.” The wood chips on the mill floor are collected and mixed with chicken manure to make fertiliser which is used to nurture 200-hectares of pecan trees which are grown on the farm at Normandien.

The Hoatsons have planted 45 000 pecan trees and have another 45 000 seedlings. In five years they hope to harvest the first crop. The income from the yield of one hectare of pecans in one year is equivalent to that of one hectare of timber harvested every 20 years.

If things work to plan, they plan to plant 1 000-hectacres under pecans long term.

“Pecans are a superfood. Plant-based protein is the future. We have to build to grow 100 years from now. We try and build with disciplined ambition, to create a pipeline, mindful of the complexities of life.

“Our businesses lean on one another. We try wherever we can not to waste and to maximise value.

“Not all the dreams we have or the plans we make will come to fruition, but we try. We never, ever give up. It is never all peaches and cream.”