I originate physical trades in southern African manganese and chrome, and farm on the Bokkeveld escarpment, where my family has worked the same land for some two hundred years.
Cloudskraal, Nieuwoudtville, Northern Cape, South Africa
Three threads that look unrelated until you follow the material: ore, soil and the stories told about both.
Business development and origination in physical manganese ore and chrome, with South Africa as the primary sourcing ground.
The work sits between producers, rail, ports and offtakers: finding the tonnes, and building the logistics chain that gets them to a ship.
Rooibos, sheep and wine on a family farm outside Nieuwoudtville, on the edge of the Bokkeveld escarpment.
An industrial engineer's habits applied to a very old place: drone monitoring, better processing, and a farm that has to work in drought years too. Visit Cloudskraal
Co-founder of a video production company based in Cape Town.
I trained as an industrial engineer at Stellenbosch, writing my thesis on rooibos production, and later studied financial analysis and investment valuation.
Since then I have worked in B2B sales, ERP implementation, operations and film, and now in commodity trading. The common thread is systems: how material, money and people move, and where they get stuck.
Notes on commodities, farming and the systems that connect them.
The first essays are being written. They will appear here.
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