Ikusasa Grain Mills Business Plan — Company Overview & Governance

Private company under the Companies Act 71 of 2008, incorporated 11 August 2025

Company Overview & Governance

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2.1 Corporate details

Item	Detail
Legal name	Ikusasa Grain Mills (Pty) Ltd
Registration number	2025/889341/07
Incorporation	Private company under the Companies Act 71 of 2008, incorporated 11 August 2025
Site	Erf 4412, Vryburg Industrial, Naledi Local Municipality, North West — 2.4 ha serviced industrial stand
Installed capacity	3 tonnes per hour; 16 hours per day; 25 days per month — 1,200 t/month, 14,400 t/annum
Products	Fortified super maize meal, special maize meal, samp, and hominy chop
B-BBEE status	Level 2 contributor; 76% Black-owned; 16% community trust; 8% employee trust
Registrations	SARS compliant; VAT registered; CSD registered; NRCS and DoH food-safety registration on commissioning
Funders sought	IDC agro-processing facility; Land Bank / DALRRD blended finance; commercial working capital

2.2 Vision and operating principle

Vision: to be the mill of choice for the North West and Northern Cape regional trade, close to the farmer, close to the customer, and consistently in stock.

StrengthThe operating principle correctly identifies where the risk actually sits

In milling, three numbers determine survival: the extraction rate, the gross processing margin and capacity utilisation. Raw material is roughly 84% of the cost base, which means the Company is as much a grain procurement and risk management business as it is a manufacturer. The Plan states this plainly and then builds its governance around it, a procurement and risk committee meeting monthly with delegated authority over hedging positions within board-approved limits. Placing commodity risk management at board level with a monthly cadence, rather than treating procurement as an operational function reporting to the mill manager, is the correct structure for this business and is unusual in a start-up of this size.

2.3 Shareholding

Figure 4. Shareholding. The producer co-operative shareholding aligns raw material supply with ownership.

Shareholder	%	Nature & role
Ikusasa Founders (Pty) Ltd	36%	Founder vehicle of the executive team; contributes the site option, development work and R3.6m of the equity injection
Vryburg Grain Growers Co-operative	20%	Co-operative of 41 local maize producers; provides preferential raw material supply and contributes R2.0m
Motswedi Agri Capital (Pty) Ltd	20%	Regional agribusiness investment vehicle providing R2.4m and board-level commercial discipline
Masisizane Community Trust	16%	Broad-based trust for the Naledi municipal community; vendor-financed, repaid from distributions
Ikusasa Employee Share Trust	8%	Evergreen trust covering all permanent employees, vesting over four years

StrengthThe producer co-operative shareholding is the structural feature that most distinguishes this from a conventional start-up mill

Forty-one local growers hold equity in the mill that buys their maize. That alignment does three things a supply contract cannot. It secures raw material access in tight seasons, when a mill without grower relationships is the last to be filled. It reduces procurement friction and basis risk, because pricing is SAFEX-referenced against an agreed differential rather than negotiated load by load. And it gives the Company visibility of the local crop from planting rather than from harvest, months of advance information on the single variable that determines 84% of its cost base. For a funder, this converts the most dangerous exposure in milling into a partly internalised relationship.

2.4 Board and management

Name	Role	Profile
Prof. Lindiwe Sithole	Independent Non-Executive Chairperson	Food science academic and former grain industry regulator; 26 years across food safety, fortification standards and agro-processing policy
Kabelo Motaung	Managing Director	BCom (Agricultural Economics); eleven years in grain trading and procurement, latterly procurement manager for a regional milling group buying 90,000 t of maize a year
Hennie Prinsloo	Operations Director	Twenty-six years in milling operations; commissioned and ran two maize mills of comparable capacity; owns extraction, throughput and plant reliability
Refilwe Dube	Financial Director	Chartered Accountant (SA) with agro-processing and commodity experience; owns the model, hedging policy execution, working capital and funder reporting
Johan van Zyl	Non-Executive Director (Co-op nominee)	Commercial maize producer; chairman of the Vryburg Grain Growers Co-operative; supply-side representation
Nomthandazo Bhengu	Non-Executive Director (Community Trust)	Development practitioner; trustee governance and local employment oversight

The management pairing is well matched to the business. A managing director whose background is grain procurement rather than general management is the right choice for an enterprise in which 84% of cost is raw material, and an operations director who has commissioned and run two mills of comparable capacity addresses the extraction and reliability risk directly. The financial director’s commodity experience matters because hedging execution and working capital management are the two disciplines most likely to determine whether the mill survives its first volatile season.