To date, Oribi Oils has donated over 1.73 million essential oil plants to farmers and co-operatives. These include high-value crops such as tea tree and eucalyptus. By distributing these plants, we not only promote sustainable agriculture but also enable the production of export-quality essential oils—creating a direct pathway to economic resilience for rural communities.
Each co-operative represents a collection of neighbours on tribal land; taken together, this amounts to some 550 individuals. We create these independent co-operatives and donate seedlings to kick-start agricultural development. We teach, train, and mentor growers on organic and fair trade farming principles, working together and sharing the profits of our collective work.
Smallholders refer to one nuclear family, between 2-5 individuals. All told, we work with around 750 individual smallholders. Similar to co-operatives, we donate seedlings, offer training and mentoring, and walk alongside these individuals to help them attain the best harvest standards and yields.
Our partnerships with commercial farmers allow us to scale production while modelling best practices in regenerative agriculture. These farmers play a key role in increasing local processing capacity and setting standards for quality and environmental stewardship in our region. Our ICS helps push improve standards on three main fronts: improving working conditions for labourers, minimising the environmental impact of farming, and implementing Fair Trade disciplines.
Through community audits and social surveys looking at the impact of jobs and income of our farming network on families and dependants, we found that our project provides the sole source of income supporting more than 2300 people.
Together with our partners, we’ve cultivated 500 hectares of land dedicated to essential oil plants. This not only contributes to sustainable land use and environmental regeneration, but also ensure a consistent supply of oil throughout the year.