Macadamia Service Management
About Us
Our Origin
Macadamia Services Management (MSM) is brought to you by a founder, Cobus Kok, whose life is steeped in South Africa’s macadamia story. From as early as 1974, the family farm planted macadamias as a pioneering venture when the industry was virtually non-existent in the country.
Cobus’s father Louis drafted the SAMAC Constitution and assisted two very influential pioneers, Prof Kas Holtzhausen and Philip Lee, in founding the association. Cobus himself has more than 25 years of experience in the production, processing, and marketing of macadamias. During this time, he became acutely aware of what was needed for the South African macadamia industry to establish its long-term prosperity and has now redirected the family business towards providing these solutions through MSM.
The COVID-19 pandemic surfaced many underlying weaknesses in how production and marketing of macadamias in South Africa is structured. Built to address these, MSM’s global trading platform and accompanying support services provide a timely pathway to prosperity through securing reliability in supply. MSM thereby also provides a conduit to retain and advance the country’s supply of critical skills and learning that has made South Africa a dominant player in advancing global macadamia trade to this point.
Shareholders & Directors
Cobus Kok
Managing Director & Founder
Daan de Kock
Chairperson of the board
Leon Doyer
Board member
Org van Rensburg
Board member
MSM Operations
Meiring van der Merwe
Chief Operating Officer
Marnelle van der Merwe
Corporate Relations Coordinator
Gerhard Potgieter
IT & Digital Manager
Vision
MSM is stimulating demand and progressing the trade of macadamia nuts by including rapidly evolving e-commerce trade and the innovation applied and utilized mostly by prudent traders, to study and access markets through transparent platforms not only disclosing price, volumes and trends, but also all other influences that can be filtered to make informed trade decisions and ease access to a market in order to trade with confidence and expedite the expansion of the macadamia market.
Our Mission
MSM’s mission is to unleash the incredible power of ingenuity vested in digitally connected ecosystems to support the critical need for an independent company that provides structures, guidelines and mechanisms for information exchange, and facilitates communication of information of an aggregate nature that will enhance healthy collaboration and synergy within the macadamia industry. This will include a price discovery mechanism that would aid in getting rid of the maturity pains of an evolving Industry and also aid in expediting efforts to grow the market.
Ease the pressure and workload of factory managers in critical peripheral areas so that they can focus on their core production functions.
Emphasize, support and enhance the Boutique Factory Concept.
Create structure for the disciplines of macadamia processing that will serve as a continuity conduit that will contribute towards developing/maturing the industry.
Act as an anchor entity to simplify entry and stimulate growth for new entrants and product value-adding entities.
Provide standards that clusters can adhere to and that would shape or cause adherence to standards in the industry.
Serve as a consultative platform that can provide cluster or industry specific specialist advice.
Stimulate cluster collaboration and cohesion to the effect that it will provide supply stability and buyer confidence, within the safety parameters derived from effective benchmarking and the provision of a trading mechanism.
Creating trade mechanisms that will provide more transparency and security with regards to supply and demand, accompanied by the stability it creates in terms of accurate pricing structure needed to conclude contracts.
