MONTIGNY INVESTMENTS: Extracting Maximum Value from Precious Timber

Proudly Swazi-owned and operated, and today positioned as the leading integrated timber grower in Southern Africa with a turnover in excess of E1 billion, Montigny Investments CEO Andrew Le Roux is quite clear on where the company’s competitive advantage lies, within such a crowded field across the Kingdom of Eswatini. “What makes us stand out from our competitors primarily,” he enthuses, “is the way in which we add value to every part of the tree.”

“We are able to extract and utilise up to 95% of the tree’s value because of the breadth of our markets.”

Back in 1997, Montigny was started up by entrepreneur Neal Rijkenberg, now Minister of Finance of Eswatini having taken up post in November 2018. At the time the operation was staunchly family-run, and supplied support timber to just one mine, but in actual fact the origins of the business date much further back to 1970, when the Rijkenberg family moved to Eswatini from South Africa and purchased a 200ha mixed farm near Nhlangano.

The family had already been involved in the timber industry in Kwambonambi, the KZN centre of sugar and timber areas, when Neal joined the family business and began building up the sawmill in earnest and purchasing more farms, planting timber wherever the terrain and climate was suitable. Still, few would have been able to predict that this nascent outfit would swell to become the largest private timber owner-operator in Southern Africa.

ADDING VALUE TO THE NATION

In its contemporary form Montigny is positioned to service almost half of the entire regional wet-off-saw timber market, and boasts diverse timber-trading interests in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Zambia and Japan. “Montigny takes an innovative approach to product development and supply,” the company expands. “We actively focus on extracting the maximum value from the timber at our disposal, and have extended our product range accordingly.

“Competitive pricing and our commitment to excellence, in both product quality and service delivery, has seen us establish long lasting relationships with suppliers, service providers and clients around the world.” Loyal customers of Montigny include the planking industry, for both industrial and fine carpentry applications, pallet users, the mining industry, furniture makers and construction companies.

On crossing the border from South Africa into the Kingdom of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, people often speak of a subtle yet perceptible change in atmosphere. While the rolling green hills and scattered rural homesteads are of a similar and familiar ilk, there is an overall air which suggests feeling more relaxed, less tense and surrounded by openness and warmth.

Montigny Investments’ forestry operation at Nhlangano confirms such impressions, the beating heart of a unique approach that is people-friendly and deeply integrated into the social fabric of Eswatini. It is one of the Kingdom’s biggest employers, having created close to 12,000 jobs since its inception, engaging with an extensive network of local subcontractors on top.

It is a dynamic company which never accepts stasis, having rapidly expanded its timber resources and processing capacity and thus increasing its market share and turnover throughout its lifetime. It combines this, crucially, with a proud and steadfast commitment to sustainable, profitable and ethical business practices, that are geared toward benefiting the local economy and adding value to the Swazi Nation. “Montigny commits significant resources to sustainable forestry practices, developing local enterprise, and giving generously to social responsibility projects.

“Montigny is deeply committed to sustainable forestry,” the company adds. “We are careful to protect biodiversity and delicate ecological areas within our forests. As much value as possible is extracted from felled timber,” it explains, “and the remaining waste is used to generate energy.” Montigny also actively engages with the communities of the more than 3000 residential units within the Montigny Usutu plantations and villages. “We conduct various social projects, school support initiatives, study scholarships, health clinics and sports events.”

In 2006, Montigny’s founder, along with a team of social developers and entrepreneurs, purchased the abandoned mining town of Bulembu, pursuing the vision to restore it to a fully sustainable town which today provides care to over 350 orphaned and vulnerable children. “Our vision is to raise leaders while restoring a town for sustainable Kingdom transformation,” the non-profit outlines. “Montigny plays an active role in the town’s commercial enterprises, as well as the care, education and health of the community, raising up the next generation to be the future leaders of Eswatini.”

FOREVER BRANCHING OUT

In 2014 Montigny concluded the purchase of Usutu Forest Products Company from Sappi, in a landmark deal which was the one of the largest private commercial transactions to take place in Eswatini. Its significance was lost on no-one at the time, perhaps summed up best by Sappi itself. “This transaction is a positive for the country,” it effused, “because it brings total ownership of this important asset back to the hands of Swazi business people; a first since the inception of the company.”

The Usutu Forest Complex boasts extensive and well-developed infrastructure and the deal put one of the largest, continuous man-made forestry estates in the world under Montigny’s purview. Montigny now transports and processes more than one million tons of timber per year, and nearly a million cubes of sawn timber make their way to market each year from the company’s more than 85,000 hectares of land, of which some 55,000 ha are under active timber management.

These plantations extend all the way from Nhlangano in southern Swaziland, to the Usutu region in the North, and also encompass a total of eight mills and processing plants. As Montigny has driven untrammelled growth of its physical size and scope, similar has followed within its product line; timber remains at the forefront, of course, through standard lumber supply to finished products and everything in between, while even local harvested and produced essential oils are now directed to the wholesale market, “in a natural and environmentally friendly manner to meet the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and household needs of the consumer everywhere.”

Montigny is one of Eswatini’s great success stories, but for all its own success and growth, it remains loyal to contributing to the country’s overall economic growth, CEO Andrew Le Roux hastens to add. “We have added value by continuing to create employment opportunities, from 6,700 in 2016 to 11,600 in 2019, and 12,500 by 2022, in rural areas with few employment opportunities,” he detailed to the king in 2019, discussing the country’s National Strategic Roadmap 2019-2023.

“The Montigny Group of Companies has continued to prosper as we remain committed to your vision of growing the Eswatini economy,” he added. “Let us now unite in supporting the Strategic Roadmap by announcing that we are a safe, secure and stable destination for investment.”