Tarlton Beetroot Business Plan — Management and Organisation

The management, agronomy and labour establishment, and the capability gaps the seed tranche is meant to close.

Section 16 of 37

Management and Organisation

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A deliberately thin structure in Years 1 and 2 that must thicken quickly at Series A — and the plan carries real key-person risk until it does.

Table 23 Headcount and organisational build

	Year 1 FY2028	Year 2 FY2029	Year 3 FY2030	Year 4 FY2031	Year 5 FY2032
Executive and management	1	1	2	3	3
Technical and agronomy	—	—	1	2	2
Commercial and key accounts	—	0.5	1	1	1
Administration and finance	0.5	1	1	2	2
Packhouse permanent	—	—	6	12	14
Field permanent	2	4	8	11	12
Total permanent	3.5	6.5	19	31	34
Seasonal at peak	4	9	22	48	55

Table 24 Key roles and required competencies

Role	Appointed	Core responsibility	Competency that must be demonstrated
Managing Director	Month 1	Overall accountability, capital raising, land acquisition, retail relationships	Commercial agriculture experience; a track record of selling into formal retail is more important than farming experience
Production Manager / Agronomist	Month 27	Planting programme, irrigation scheduling, crop protection, yield delivery	Demonstrated root-crop yields at or above 50 t/ha under irrigation; boron and disease management specifically
Packhouse Manager	Month 34	Wash, grade, pack, cold chain, food safety compliance	Prior GLOBALG.A.P. or equivalent audit responsibility
Commercial Manager	Month 13	Channel mix, key accounts, pricing, market agent relationship	Existing category buyer relationships in Gauteng formal retail
Financial Manager	Month 27	Reporting, covenant compliance, working capital, VAT recovery	Agricultural VAT and biological asset accounting; lender reporting

A board of four is constituted at Series A: the Managing Director, one seed representative, one Series A representative and one independent non-executive chairperson with commercial agriculture experience.
Reserved matters requiring investor consent include further borrowing above R1 million, any disposal or encumbrance of land, capital expenditure above R500,000 outside the approved budget, related-party transactions, and any change to the channel strategy that increases municipal market dependence above 35 per cent.
Monthly management accounts within 15 business days, quarterly board meetings, an annual independent review, and covenant reporting on DSCR and net debt to EBITDA to the mortgage lender.
Management incentives are structured as a founder ratchet returning up to 4 percentage points of equity if Year 5 EBITDA exceeds R7.5 million and the DSCR covenant is met in every quarter from month 40. This is not modelled in the returns presented, which are calculated before any ratchet.