Levubu Root Business Plan — Go-to-Market Strategy

Reaching fresh market buyers and seed customers, contracting and the sales cycle behind each channel.

Go-to-Market Strategy

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11.1 Sequencing: why the seed channel is opened first
11.2 Channel strategy and volume allocation
11.3 The commercial funnel
11.4 Pricing strategy

11.1 Sequencing: why the seed channel is opened first

The commercial sequence is deliberately inverted relative to what a conventional plan would do. The seed channel is opened before the fresh channel is scaled, for three reasons. Seed sells in a shortage market and therefore requires less commercial effort per rand of revenue. Seed customers are growers, who are reachable through study groups and input suppliers rather than through a twelve-month retail listing process. And seed revenue arrives at a higher margin, which matters most in FY2028 and FY2029 when the company is least able to absorb a commercial disappointment.

Retail programme negotiation nevertheless begins in month eight, because the lead time from first approach to first delivery is nine to fifteen months and includes a technical audit that the company cannot pass until the packhouse is commissioned and certified.

11.2 Channel strategy and volume allocation

Channel	FY2027	FY2029	FY2031	Role in the plan
National retail programmes	0%	48%	67%	The strategic target. Requires packhouse, cold chain and certification from the first season even though volume is not placed there until FY2029.
Regional and independent retail	22%	24%	17%	Faster to open and useful for building a delivery record ahead of the national audits.
Fresh produce market agents	78%	28%	16%	The first-season clearing channel and, thereafter, the deliberate alternative that keeps programme negotiation honest.
Processors and food service	Off-grade	Off-grade	Off-grade	Absorbs the 12% of output that fails retail specification at R7.00 to R7.80 per kilogram. Loss limitation, not strategy.
Ginger growers (seed)	From FY2027	Scaling	90 ha supplied	Opened first. Highest margin and lowest commercial cost per rand of revenue.

Table 22. Allocation of graded fresh volume by channel across the plan. Percentages are of fresh dispatch, not of total revenue.

11.3 The commercial funnel

Quantifying a funnel for a business with fewer than twenty customers of consequence is more useful as a resourcing test than as a forecasting tool. The relevant question is whether the commercial headcount and budget in the model can plausibly deliver the accounts the revenue requires.

Stage	Retail	Regional	Seed growers	Conversion assumption
Qualified leads identified	6	28	140	Retail: the four national groups plus two large regional groups. Growers: identified through study groups, input suppliers and district agronomists.
Active engagement	5	18	70	Retail conversion to engagement is near universal; growers require a farm visit.
Trial or audit stage	4	12	38	Retail technical audit; growers take a one to three tonne trial quantity.
Converted to supply	2	13	26	Regional conversion includes multi-site groups counted once.
Retained into a second season	2	11	20	Seed retention assumed at 78%; a grower who has had a clean season rarely returns to saved rhizome.
FY2031 revenue contributed	R40.5m	R10.3m	R20.6m

Table 23. Commercial funnel at FY2031 scale. Retail figures include the fresh produce market channel within the regional column for simplicity.

The resourcing test is passed but not comfortably. The commercial, logistics and administration function reaches eleven people by FY2031, of whom perhaps four are commercially deployed against a funnel of 238 active engagements. The seed business in particular is people-intensive because it is sold farm to farm with agronomic support attached. The commercial budget of R1.52m in FY2031 is a genuine constraint and is one of the first lines that would need to increase if the seed channel scales faster than planned.

11.4 Pricing strategy

Element	Approach
Fresh ginger, programme	Priced by negotiation against landed import parity, at a premium reflecting freshness, traceability and continuity. The plan assumes R22.00 per kilogram in FY2027 rising to R25.00 by FY2031, approximately R4.80 above Gauteng wholesale import parity. Programme pricing is fixed for the season.
Fresh ginger, spot	Market-determined. The plan assumes no premium in this channel and uses it as a volume clearing mechanism rather than a margin channel.
Off-grade	R7.00 rising to R7.80 per kilogram. Negotiated annually with two or three processors. The objective is to avoid discarding, not to earn margin.
Certified seed rhizome	R68.00 rising to R76.00 per kilogram, approximately three times the food price. Priced against the grower’s avoided disease cost rather than against the company’s production cost, which is the correct basis given the value asymmetry set out in Section 4.2.
Discounting policy	Volume discounts on seed are capped at 8% and are offered only against multi-season commitments, because the pricing rests on scarcity and on demonstrated performance rather than on volume economics.

Table 24. Pricing approach by product and channel.

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