Martignani and South African Citrus Fruits

Today we converse with Charl Wynand Rautenbach (father) and Stephan Ignatius Rautenbach (son), with the presence of Conray Van Rooyen, Benjamin Board Ferreira, Elrico Mulder and Alessia Toia of SouthTrade International.

We’re standing near of Patensie, of about 5.000 inhabitants, in the Eastern Cape, province of South Africa, which is located in the southeast of the country. The town is a center for the citrus, tobacco and vegetable farms in the area.

Roikrans Agri Business Ltd

The Rautenbach are the owners of the grower farm “Roikrans Agri Business (pty) Ltd” among their properties have 53 hectares of Table Grapes and 150 hectares of citrus.

The interesting and pleasant conversation takes us back in time, specifically when Southtrade presented them the technology and the Martignani sprayers, followed by a field night trial, with results so evident and excellent who decided to buy them for their company.

They bought the first nebulizer in 2015. Today, they have 2 machines M612 Turbo 2 1500 l. to work on 70 ha, because trees on the other land are still small.

Advantages of the Martignani’s Machines

The main advantages obtained with the use of Martignani’s technology speak for itself.

- Working time reduction of about 50%

- Pesticides usage reduction from 20 to 35%

- Water demand reduction of about 90%

Specifically, these growers make treatments on young plants with only 300 l/ha at a speed of 3.2 km/h and treatments on adult plants (3.5 meters high) with 500 l/ha at a speed of 1.3 km/h, whereas before, with the conventional sprayers, volumes of water used were always higher than 5000 l/ha.

Among the other benefits than the Rautenbach has found in Martignani’s technology is the possibility to work continuously with a very low machines downtime (compared with competing machines) for maintenance related to nozzle fillings.

The Rautenbach says that they were the first Martignani’s consumer in that zone, now works near of Patensie 21 Martignani’s machines (especially M612 T.2 of 1500 l.), distributed among eight companies, of which one of them posses 7.

Patensie is located in a valley dedicates to citrus then, the Martignani’s machines work in this cultivation.

Customers are noticing that fruits treated with Martignani’s technology are cleaner and more unblemished than before. They also guarantee a higher quality due to the reduced use of pesticides.