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Welcome to our new look website
A very warm welcome to the new Swazi Secrets website. It certainly has a New Look, but it is also much more extensive and more ambitious than the previous site, hopefully giving you a far broader insight into what we do and how and why we do it.
Ideally, we’d love everyone to come and visit our factory and to take a tour round to meet some of the 2,600 rural Swazi women who supply us. We know you can’t all do that so we’ve tried to bring much of it to you via the new site.
One major new feature is the virtual tour of the whole production process in the ‘Tree to Bottle’ section. We have also included sections devoted to:
* Our quality standards
* Sustainable wild harvesting
* Information on marula and other natural oils,
We believe in working in partnership – with our suppliers, our distributors, retailers and end users. We hope that the new site, coupled with our blog at www.wordpress.swazisecrets.com and our Facebook page will enable far better direct two way communication to help build those partnerships.
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Members test new nut cracker
SIP members in Siphofaneni were the first to try a new marula nut cracker designed to help them crack their nuts faster to stave off the threat of losing this work to factory based machinery. Cracking marula nuts to sell the fresh kernels is a major source of income – R650,000 last year – to rural Swazi women and they are fighting to save it. They will be field testing the new cracker over the next few weeks and feeding back design improvements. SIP hope to then have them available at an affordable price to all members before the 2010 marula season starts.
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UNDP help to protect rural Swazi livelihoods
Rural Swazis have been aware that as the popularity of marula oil grows, so too does the threat that somone will master the technology to crack the nuts in a factory, endangering a major source of their rural income. That threat is now reality, with a factory doing so, right on their doorstep.
They are fighting back, stepping up efforts to develop a mechanical technology to crack the nuts more quickly, that they can use in their homesteads. And they are getting support from UNDP, who are granting E40,000 to Swazi Indigenous Products for engineering help in developing the rural cracker. SIP is teaming up with women’s groups from Namibia and South Africa with the aim of providing their members with a machine that will triple their productivity and be available by the next marula season at an affordable cost.
If there are any engineers out there who know the marula nut and think you have some ideas to contribute, we’d love to hear from you.
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Rural suppliers now own the Company
June 11 saw the first AGM of Swazi Indigenous Products and was also the occasion for the handover of 100% of the company’s share certificates to its rural suppliers. 38 of the 43 founder Member Groups attended the event at SIP’s Mpaka factory. After adopting their new constitution, the Member Group representatives received their share certificates from acting Chairperson, Futhi Mdluli. After the ceremony, Executive Director John Pearce explained that the shares could not be bought or sold and if a Member Group ceased to function, its share would revert to the company. As new Member Groups were formed, they would also be receiving shares.
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More information ...
Newsletter Xmas 09
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March 2009 Newsletter
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Links ...
Talk to us and see what other people have to say – on the Swazi Secrets blogsite http://swazisecrets.wordpress.com/ – or if you are a facebook user, look for the Swazi Secrets page on facebook.
Customer Feedback
Here is a selection of feedback from our customers around the world ...
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Just met a lady who just came back from your company and gave me a priceless gift - which was one of your oils.
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| Olive B de Witt, New York |
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I have just been given 3 cakes of Marula soap and I love it. I live in Saudi Arabia and would like to purchase some of your products.
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| Robbie Barrett, Saudi Arabia |
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I blame my friend for giving me an assortment of your lovely products for Christmas. I have since become addicted, especially to the oil, and am becoming worried as I have about 2mm of left in the bottle.
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| Branka Vudakin, Rome |
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I have been using your product for the last 3 months and I have had some amazing results.
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| Margie Adams, South Africa |
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I've had a very special experience with the marula oil lately. I suddenly took a close look at my husband (of almost 40 years) and saw the deep furrows on his forehead and was struck with the thought that I would try what the marula oil could do about that. Both of us have been totally stricken by the immense change in only about a week. He is so changed, just a pity that we didn't take a picture 'before' and 'after'. Mother Nature is really magnificent!
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| Mary Nordfors, Sweden |
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I’ve been trying marula oil on my stretch marks and it has really helped. They have reduced by about 75%.
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| Lungile Magongo, Swaziland |
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