Green Master Vegetables Business Plan — Unit Economics

The economics of a hectare by crop and system: yield, price, input cost and the gross margin each produces.

Unit Economics

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Figure 10. What one hectare earns and costs, Year 5.

Per hectare, Year 5	R	% of net revenue
Net revenue per hectare	462 444	100.0%
Packaging	(78 711)	17.0%
Transport	(57 244)	12.4%
Fertiliser	(53 689)	11.6%
Chemicals	(32 444)	7.0%
Seed and seedlings	(26 956)	5.8%
Water and pumping	(19 644)	4.2%
Gross margin per hectare	193 756	41.9%
Fixed cost per hectare	(117 733)	25.5%
EBITDA per hectare	76 022	16.4%

Figure 11. The Year 5 cost structure as a percentage of revenue.

Packaging is the largest single cost line at 17.0 per cent of net revenue, followed by transport at 12.4 per cent, fertiliser at 11.6 per cent and field and packhouse labour at 11.0 per cent. Market commission at 7.2 per cent of net revenue sits fifth and exceeds chemicals, seed and water combined.

Packaging and transport do not fall when the market price does

Packaging and transport together are 29.4 per cent of Year 5 net revenue, R6.12 million. Both are driven by tonnage rather than by value, which means they are the same whether a tonne of cabbage sells for R4 000 or for R3 000. A grower in Limpopo put it precisely: when prices drop you still have to cover packaging, boxes, sacks and wages, and those expenses do not go down. That asymmetry is the single most important thing to understand about the sensitivity analysis in Section 16. A 25 per cent price fall removes R5.20 million of revenue and roughly nothing from the cost base, which is why it takes Year 5 EBITDA from plus R3.42 million to minus R1.78 million. It is also why the transport line deserves particular attention: diesel rose 53.8 per cent in the twelve months to May 2026.

Figure 12. Fuel price movement over twelve months to May 2026.

Figure 13. Where every rand of net revenue goes.

9.1 How the cost base behaves

Line	Driven by	Falls with a price fall?	Management lever
Packaging	Tonnes packed	No	Reusable crates on direct routes; grade before packing, not after
Transport	Tonnes moved and distance	No	Full loads; combined drops; direct delivery avoids a second handling
Fertiliser	Hectares and crop	No	Annual soil analysis; a programme built from it rather than from habit
Chemicals	Hectares and pest pressure	No	Scouting and thresholds rather than calendar spraying
Seed and seedlings	Hectares planted	No	Committed at planting, months before the price is known
Water and pumping	Hectares irrigated	No	Soil moisture probes; drip rather than overhead
Commission and agent levy	Value sold through the floor	Yes	The only cost line that falls with the price — and the one being reduced
Fixed cost base	Time, not output	No	Carried by area; the reason break-even is expressed in hectares

Only one line in that table falls when the market price falls, and it is the one the plan is deliberately shrinking. That is not a contradiction: commission is a poor form of insurance, costing 12 per cent in every year to reduce the loss in a bad one. The better protection is a direct channel with a negotiated price, which is what Section 8 builds.

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