All you need to know about All Gold Tomato Sauce

All Gold is South Africa’s most iconic tomato sauce brand, but many consumers have no clue what it takes to produce it. 

Vuk’uzenzele recently had an opportunity to join Tiger Brands during its heritage tour in Musina in Limpopo to profile the tomato journey from seedling to plate. Tiger Brands is one of the top food-producing companies in South Africa. 
Its supply chain extends from three geographical tomato growing areas in the country, including Musina in Limpopo, Lutzville in the Western Cape,  and Boksburg in Gauteng.

Tiger Brands has contracted 108 farmers in Musina and 58 farmers in Lutzville to grow and supply it with tomatoes.  It has an additional five nurseries in Limpopo to prepare seedlings for farmers in the area. 
Riverside Nursery in Musina is one of them, and it has been working with Tiger Brands for the past 17 years.

The nursery manager, Henno Breytenbach said: “Tiger Brands provides us with seeds so that we can sell the seedlings to farmers contracted to Tiger Brands. There are certain cultivars of tomatoes that are required for All Gold Tomato Sauce.”

He explained that it takes up to two days for the seeds to germinate, and depending on the temperature, the seedlings take about five weeks before they can be ready for transplantation.

The nursery sells the seedlings to the contracted farmers between December and May every year for transplantation, and the tomatoes are ready to be harvested between 1 April and 30 September based on the transplantation period.

Tiger Brands agricultural manager Sipho Modiba said the seedlings need to be an average of 15cm to be transplanted. He said the reason for requiring a certain type of cultivars is because All Gold Tomato Sauce needs tomatoes that can yield the best quality paste.

“It must be the right colour, size and sugar content before it is processed into a paste. We have three varieties of tomato seeds that we have been using for approximately 18 years,” he explained.

Tiger Brands produces 100 000 tonnes of tomatoes to produce All Gold Tomato Sauce per year.

Tiger Brands managing director for culinary Dumo Mfini said the company operates two tomato processing plants in Musina and Lutzville.

At the processing plants, the tomatoes are graded, sorted, cooked refined to a paste that is transported to the company’s culinary factory in Boksburg in Johannesburg for further processing and packaging of the All Gold Tomato Sauce.

Modiba said Tiger Brands has spent more than R100 million on supporting farmers and aggregators in the market and reviews supply contracts yearly to ensure fair and equitable terms for the company and producers.