Du Roi Laboratory specialises in the production and distribution of disease-free, virus-indexed tissue culture sugarcane and banana plants. These are multiplied from superior selections obtained from the Du Roi Laboratory foundation block and continually tested, evaluated and compared for their commercial performance attributes.
Du Roi’s Anne Davson and General Manager Sune Kleynhanstake us through he beginnings of the lab and the central factors making it such a unique proposition in the market. “The Du Roi laboratory was established in 1994. Our principal products are sugarcane and banana plants, of which we supply between six and eight million tonnes each year. The main advantages of this tissue culture are that it not only is it free from disease, but that it has also allowed us to put together elite selections which produce higher yields and which grow more vigorously.”
Both the sugarcane and banana undertakings have reaped notable success for Du Roi over the past year, as the pair explain. “Our sugarcane project has kicked off extremely well, seeing us send over 400,000 plants already this year to Sierra Leone. We have also added sugarcane distribution into Ghana and Zamibia over the course of the year, as well as small amounts into Mozambique.”Th original laboratory product, its bananas, continues to see a steady growth of its global footprint. “We’re delighted to be able to say that we are about to start sending these into the French West Indies, which represents a new market for us. Alongside this, we will continue sending further banana plants into African countries, and particularly in Morocco, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.”
“On this side of the business we have a very well established local market alongside a burgeoning export market too,”continues Kleynhans, with the tissue culture employed here having a further benefit when it comes to sending the product to market. “The plant being free of disease is clearly a great advantage for the farmer, but it also means that it is easily transported into Africa because we can send the items as soon as they come out of the lab. The appropriate certification is easily obtained with tissue culture, and we can send it around the world, as most countries globally accept the product from South Africa.”
Du Roi’s was the first tissue culture laboratory in Africa to be ISO accredited for banana production, one reason why it continues to be chosen ahead of the competition. “We have a great track record,”says Davson. “Its a proven quality product, which is why people keep coming back to us. We have our own unique selections which have been evaluated by Dr John Rawlinson, a world-renowned banana specialist and horticulturalist, and those selections have proven themselves to have a higher yield than the traditional equivalents.”
“We have committed to investing in procedures that no other laboratory in the world follows. For example, each plant that is initiated into our lab is virus indexed, so we can guarantee that each is completely virus-free.”While this guarantee remains pivotal to Du Roi’s work, financial considerations will naturally always inform a choice of this nature, an area in which Du Roi again finds itself at the forefront. “Our competitive pricing is key in people buying from us,”expands Davson. “At the end of the day people will always look at the bottom line, so being able to offer this is central to our success.”
“Additionally, our directors have been in the business for 25 years, and so the importance of customer relations must never be overlooked.”
For the Du ROi Goup more generally, there has been something of a consolidation of the business in recent months, as Kleynhans explains. “We have sold both the insect business, IPM, and our pathology laboratory. We are concentrating now on our citrus nursery, which supplies in the region of a million plants each year into South Africa and the Southwark regions. As well as ourselves, with our focus on banana and sugarcane tissue culture, we also have another business – Du Roi MultiPlant – which multiplies supplies elite strains of pomegranate and guava all around these two regions. Our focus is on plant production moving forward.”
Du Roi’s involvement with the development of bioenergy technology forms another of its key considerations at present. “If we just look at the energy crisis currently being seen in South Africa, we are certainly looking to support any projects geared toward using bioenergy to produce ethanol,”states Davson. Exemplary of this is its supplying of the plants for the processes at the 10,000 hectare Makeni sugarcane estate, a project overseen by Addax seeking to produce some 85,000m3 of ethanol per annum.
“This first project we have entered into with Addax aims to provide some solutions to the challenges of sugarcane growing in Sierra Leone,”says Kleynhans. “With tissue culture we are able to provide field-ready plants, to be sown as soon as they land in Sierra Leone. We can certify too that these are virus and disease free, guaranteeing the increased yields. We have employed our usual procedures for sugarcane production in order to propagate for Addax. It is far superior to the conventional methods of planting sugarcane, whereby the material is hot bathed and treated at specific temperatures, which does not even guarantee that it will be disease-free. As a result, they are planting material which may be diseased and thus significantly affects the yield the sugarcane plant will deliver.”
Du Roi will be exhibiting a near singular focus on its main products in the forthcoming years, in order to maintain its characteristic quality and delivery of its service. “Our sugarcane project only came to fruition in October last year, so we are still establishing our markets and getting the Du Roi name associated with sugarcane in the market and showing our availability. We then have research and development underway in a number of other potential fields, like bamboo and blueberries, all different opportunities that have been brought to us. We are currently evaluating these and deciding where best to place our focus.”
Du Roi emphasises that it deals only in genetically improved material, not modified, expertise it will be putting to use to continue to provide solutions to growers and people across the globe. “There are many challenges for banana and sugarcane growers,”states Davson, “with regard new diseases, viruses, insect and water problems, so we are also heavily involved in research in this regard. We will be sourcing resistant plants and then bulking them for our research institute both in South Africa and Europe, as well as expanding into the rest of the world when it comes to renewable energy.”
It will do this with a keen eye on the social responsibility which comes with a company of this scale. “We have ongoing training and development programmes for our staff, as well as staff wellness days where we encourage opens and help manage any critical illnesses,”outlines Kleynhans. “Furthermore, we always look at our communities. Whether this is assisting with bursaries, providing creches for employees’children, or giving aid to orphanages for the most valuable children, we are tackling things which are particular challenges in our area. We continually strive to empower the people around our businesses.”