gebana Maghreb becomes South Organic

Dates are an important source of income in the region around Kebili. Taieb Foudhaili’s family, one of the two founders of South Organic, also maintained a small date grove as a sideline.

After studying philosophy, Taieb Foudhaili himself found employment with one of the local date processors in Kebili. There he worked his way up from a simple worker to production manager.

In this position he met Christian Zengel, a German farmer who specialized in drying vegetables and fruits. After the company where Taieb Foudhaili was employed at that time withdrew from Tunisia, he and Christian Zengel simply took over its date business together. They were able to take over the processing facilities and machines and gradually earned the trust of the farmers and workers. They started with 12–15 farmers from Taieb’s family village. Taieb Foudhaili took care of the business in Tunisia, while Christian Zengel mainly handled sales in Western Europe. The business got off to a good start and already in the first year around 70 tons of dates could be sold.

At that time gebana was already in contact with Christian Zengel, and at the beginning of 2003 a trading relationship for dates was established. But shortly thereafter, in the summer of 2003, disaster struck: Christian Zengel was seriously injured in an accident. Gebana stepped in at short notice and took over Christian Zengel’s work as best it could. But it soon became clear that he would not return to his position, and so gebana were also transferred the entrepreneur’s business shares. Instead, Christian Zengel became a shareholder and to this day is a loyal supporter of gebana. An intensive collaboration followed with Taieb Foudhaili under the name gebana Maghreb.

Since the revolution in Tunisia in 2011, Taieb Foudhaili gradually developed the conviction that gebana Maghreb should become an independent Tunisian company. In the following, at times turbulent years, gebana repeatedly took major risks to support the company’s development and to preserve jobs in the politically unstable south of Tunisia. In particular, the construction of a modern processing facility from 2013 pushed both
companies to the limits of their financial and organizational capacity.

In 2015 there was a restructuring of South Organic. gebana agreed to sell the company shares to Taieb Foudhaili. Taieb Foudhaili then brought local investors on board and anchored the company more strongly on site.

Although the spin-off happened somewhat contre coeur after so many years of joint commitment, we regard the separation of South Organic and the company’s overall development as a success. Our aim is to build stable businesses in the countries of origin or to support them in doing so. And this succeeded here: the amount of dates sold increased from 70 to 1,300 tonnes, jobs were created and instead of working with only 15, today about 200 farming families are involved.

For the coming years we have agreed with South Organic not only on a minimum purchase quantity of dates, but also on the strategic direction. Local financing is to be invested in quality and in the processing of by-products. Because we see it the same way as Taieb Foudhaili: "Demand for dates is certainly large, but only when the quality is right and all by-products are used is it also economically sustainable."