Thanks to Lorenz and Elsa Plath,

Dad and Mom, our founders and our inspiration who literally built the farm from the ground up. With a huge amount of effort, never ending faith and a commitment to grow the farm, they taught us to care for the environment and our family.

We’re proud to have been taught their values and be entrusted to build upon their legacy. We show up every day to continue their incredible work looking after our trees, our team, and our customers.  And caring for the next generation (our kids and grandkids), who are now working beside me in the family business, just as we did, and just as we hope their kids will and the many more generations to come.

From much humbler beginnings in 1963 when my parents first came farming there were a few bananas and pineapples and no irrigation available as the springs dried up in the years. Originally, they aimed at planting: Vegetable, Bananas, Strelitzia, coffee, and Avocados with one tractor, implements, a weir, pump, and a few piping. A dam wall was established in 1966 that got washed away during an excessively heavy storm. By the end of 1968 a new dam wall was build and by the end of 1969 a pump and pipelines were installed for overhead irrigation of bananas. Meanwhile from 1970 onwards a strelitzia and macadamia Nursery had been started and a variety of Macadamia nuts propagated. By 1972 the dam wall was built higher to supply water to Bananas, Vegetables and Macadamias (which was decided on instead of Avocados and Coffee)

In 1973 in May and November devastating hailstorms put an end to the banana farming. Thus from 1974 onwards full focus was on macadamias and vegetables as the main income till the nuts were in full production. 1975 – 1976 more tractors and implements were bought to handle extra ploughing and transport. The first small macadamia crop was harvested in 1978, which was dried, shelled, roasted, processed, and sold with great SUCCESS!

In mid-1978, 10 hectare Grenadillas were planted out and trellised between macadamia rows and replaced of all vegetable crop and another 20 hectares planned as working capital allowed.

1000 Strelitzia plants were in full flower, 5000 young plants inlands and +- 40000 plants (from own seed) ready for potting and later into lands. The reason for planting strelitzias at that stage, was that they recovered very quickly and more resistant after the hail damage. They also aimed for future sales in the export market.

in 1991 I Bernhard Lorenz Plath  took over the management of the farm after 11years working as a soil scientist, specializing in accessing natural resources (soil, climate and terrain), and deduces land capability and land potential for specific land use in the agriculture, forestry, urban, rural, environmental, irrigation and mining sectors. Farming became a passion and I managed the farm and expanded under BLP Farming and later migrated the business to Plath Macadamia Company (Pty) Ltd to date.