South African Winery Grows Business, Boosts Workers

30 September 2008 By Phillip Kurata Staff Writer

Fair trade helps woman rise from cleaning lady to farm manager

Cape Town, South Africa — South Africa’s first organic winemaker, Stellar Winery, is breaking into overseas markets with innovative food products while helping to change the face of South African business.

Willem Rossouw established Stellar in the semi-arid northwestern region of South Africa, near the Namibian border, in 2003.  He has put 26 percent of the ownership in the hands of the company’s workers.

“His goal is to put 100 percent in the hands of the Stellar employees,” Lee Griffin, Stellar’s marketing chief, told America.gov September 29.  “He will relinquish control of the company when he is confident that the new owners are capable of sustaining the business.”

Rossouw is a leading participant in the South African government’s Black Economic Empowerment initiative, which aims to lift blacks out of poverty and into the country’s economic mainstream.  The U.S. government, through its South African International Business Linkages program, backs the black empowerment initiative.  It provides training to Stellar personnel in business and community development as well as introductions to prospective international buyers for Stellar wines.

“Stellar would have done this without U.S. government backing,” Griffin said, “but success would have come more slowly.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development sponsored Stellar’s participation in the Fancy Foods exhibition in New York earlier in 2008, where its organic wines, produced without hangover-inducing sulfite preservatives, generated high interest.

At present, the United Kingdom is the biggest overseas market for Stellar wines, and its labels also are found on store shelves in a number of other European countries.  Griffin predicts the United States will soon become the biggest market for the Stellar brand, given Americans’ growing appetite for organic foods.

The winery’s production has grown dramatically, from 13,500 bottles in 2003 to a projected 2.4 million bottles in 2008.  Stellar also produces grapeseed oil and a vinegar substitute, made from unripe grapes, known as verjuice.

Griffin said founder Rossouw is “totally committed” to organic farming.  “In the long run, it is cheaper than conventional farming because of the cost of chemicals,” she said.  She added that he is planning to set up a wind energy project to run the winery as part of his design to leave a “negative carbon footprint.”

Stellar has gained the coveted Fair Trade accreditation issued by Control Union Certifications in the Netherlands.  The accreditation vouches that employee welfare is a company priority and stipulates that a portion of earnings must be designated for employee benefits.

Rossouw has placed talented, once-disenfranchised blacks in leadership positions: Berty Jones is the deputy to the chief winemaker, and Maria Malan manages one of the Stellar grape farms.

Jones was a miner and a concrete layer before Stellar was created.  After participating in its construction, he was offered an opportunity to learn the winemaking business.  He accepted and is now the assistant to the chief winemaker, Dudley Wilson.

Jones supervises more than 30 workers and is involved in wine production, testing, bottling and labeling. “He is there from the arrival of the grapes to the final product,” Griffin said.

The next stage of Jones’ career may see him as a “fair trade ambassador,” traveling to international trade shows, pitching Stellar wines and explaining the benefits that fair trade practices bring to Stellar workers, Griffin said.

Malan came to the home of Rossouw’s parents as a domestic servant in 1976 and distinguished herself through her discipline, intelligence and devotion to the well-being of the people around her.  After majority rule was achieved, Malan became active in the regional politics of the Western Cape.

When Rossouw, in consultation with his brothers, decided to establish a winery on the family land, he paid for Malan to attend an agricultural college for a two-year course in grape cultivation, which she completed in 2004.  She is only one of two women in South Africa to have done this.  She is well versed in the technical side of grape cultivation as well as community leadership, according to Griffin.

“Fair trade has made it possible for me to rise from cleaning lady to become a farm manager,” Malan is quoted as saying in a Stellar brochure.

In 2005, Stellar workers voted to spend the first installment of their fair trade premiums, $6,000, to build fences around each home on the winery, allowing individual homeowners greater privacy and the opportunity to cultivate family gardens.  Since then, the workers have used fair trade proceeds to buy laptop computers.

“The youngsters at Stellar are using the laptops to learn finance and accounting to prepare for the day when they take over management,” Griffin said.

The fair trade income accumulates in the Stellar Employees’ Trust, which is managed by a democratically elected committee known as the Joint Body.

As income from organic wine sales rises, the committee has established a commercial community organic vegetable garden and planted a special educational vineyard next to an elementary school.  The vineyard is used to train the children in organic farming.  The income from the garden and vineyard goes into a fund for university education for the children of the Stellar workers.