Accelerating community empowerment in the forestry value chain and supporting small businesses.
In South Africa, our main channel for supporting enterprises is Mondi Zimele, a Mondi-owned subsidiary, which aims to accelerate community empowerment in the forestry value chain and support small businesses around Mondi’s operations.
Mondi Zimele has also been instrumental in establishing several land claimant community contractors, where we continue to emphasise productivity improvement, business administration and compliance as the key to success for these small and medium enterprises.
Mondi provides post settlement support to the claimants as well as discounted funding and business mentorship to support their contracting businesses so that they continue the sustainable management and certification of fibre production to the mutual long-term benefit of the environment and stakeholders.
businesses supported in 2022
jobs created since 2012
revenue creation per annum
Another initiative is the small-scale timber grower programme, which aims to develop emerging forestry growers through skills transfer, financial support, secure markets and other inputs such as quality seedlings. The programme has benefited over 3,435 growers with support from Mondi Zimele since it was launched. In 2022, some 157,040 tonnes of wood was sourced from rural smallholdings (1-10 hectares each).
Mondi Zimele also distributed 1.2 million seedlings in the 2022 planting season and provided training, mill visits and knowledge-sharing field days to eligible small growers. In addition, significant progress has been made in driving sustainability of small grower timber, through FSC Group Scheme certification. Working collaboratively with CMO (FSC Group Scheme Owner), 101 small growers being onboarded to the FSC Group Scheme, with 36 of them now supplying FSC certified pulpwood timber to Mondi Richards Mill, with work in progress to increase this number.
In 2022, Mondi Zimele supported 33 businesses and provided discounted loan funding of around €686,000, amounting to a total of approximately €8 million since 2012, supporting over 300 local businesses, and contributing to the creation of over 4,500 jobs. This has created revenues in excess of €25 million per annum.
Learn more about Mondi Zimele and watch our video about Mondi Zimele's emerging timber grower programme below.
Mondi Action Plan 2030
