Prosperitas Foods

Friersdale is a town located along the Orange River in South Africa’s Northern Cape, approximately 60 kilometers south of Upington. This region, known for its fertile soil, is globally recognized for producing premium-quality raisins. Despite its harsh climate and low annual summer rainfall (around 250mm), the combination of hot summer days and sufficiently cold winters makes it an ideal area for growing grapes of exceptional quality. In the mid-2000s, a Canadian family-owned fresh produce company established a raisin processing facility in Friersdale, named Kalahari Raisins (Pty) Ltd, specifically to serve the Canadian market. This facility successfully operated for several years, exclusively supplying the parent company, Golden Boy Foods in Canada. However, when the Canadian business was sold in 2010, the Friersdale plant was shut down. A local raisin company later acquired the facility with hopes of continuing operations but struggled due to limited capital and the challenges of managing both the existing business and a second plant. In 2013, a local farmer reopened the plant under the new name Farmers Pride Raisins. This initiative aimed to provide local growers with a packing and distribution hub that operated on a service-fee model, allowing profits to be shared among farmers. In 2017, the farmer sold the business to refocus solely on farming. In February 2018, Orange River Cellars (ORC) acquired the facility. ORC, the largest cooperative of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, produces a wide variety of wines for both domestic and international markets. With over 700 member producers, the co-op cultivates around 12,000 hectares of land stretching 350 km along the Orange River from Groblershoop in the east to Onseepkans in the west. The raisin facility has a processing capacity of 7,000 tons and employs 60 full-time workers. Farmers Pride Raisins, now under ORC, exports 95% of its packed products, with the remainder supplied locally.