1kg crushed marula fruit seeds sell for E58
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MPAKA – Are you aware that 1kg of crushed marula fruit seeds can make you E58?
Well, these are some of the opportunities offered for local women at the Swazi Secrets facility in Mpaka (Lubombo Region). Investigations by Eswatini News revealed that the crushed marula seeds do not only have financial rewards, but they are used to produce activated carbon (charcoal), which is normally utilised during social outings like braais and parties.
Swazi Secrets’ General Manager Wandile Dlamini encouraged all women in the four regions of the country to utilise this facility for the benefit of their families.
Noteworthy is that Her Majesty the Queen Mother, in her address during the recent Buganu Festival held at the Buhleni Royal Residence, registered her concern that Lutsango (women regiment) was not fully utilising the Mpaka facility to put food on family table.
Dlamini confirmed that 1kg of crushed marula seeds were priced at E58, while those who brought uncrushed seeds of the same weight were paid E17. “We recently did an assessment by visiting some homes around this area, where we discovered that most people do not actually realise the importance of the marula seeds, they just throw them away after drinking the marula brew. They do not realise that those seedlings can make them money,” Dlamini said.
According research studies, activated carbon (AC) is a term that refers to a family of carbonaceous solid material, resulting from biomass, coal, and polymer scrap through thermal or thermochemical processes. AC is non-porous adsorbents in nature and plays an important role in both gas and liquid phase separation processes. They are AC characterised by a well-formed pore morphology, high surface area, electron-conducting amphoteric property, and high adsorptive capacity.
AC is widely used in different fields further than adsorption to wastewater treatment, solvent recovery, air pollution control, and other industrial effluents.
South Africa is one of the largest producers of marula fruits, and these fruits are used for producing the international branded Amarula liquor. Marula produces the fruits in warm frost-free climates, as found in Eswatini and the northern parts of South Africa.
The tree can produce 500kg of ripe fruits per year with a delightfully juicy acid taste. The fruit contains a nut that is removed from the fruit and this marula nutshell generates a waste that is pale brown in colour and has an oval shape. Marula nutshell has been reported to have a carbon content of 38.2 per cent, a moisture content of 5.5 per cent and an ash content of 8.4 per cent.
The low ash content present in the biomass has been reported to have good properties for making good adsorbent ACs with good mechanical strength.
Marula fruits, besides being the main products for producing Amarula liqour, the material produces marula nutshell, which possess adequate characteristics for the production of activated carbon. In the literature, there are no published studies on obtaining nitrogen doped ACs from marula nutshell by KOH activation and melamine as a nitrogen precursor.
“Crushing of the marula fruits requires intense labour and you find that most of the women are now old to go through that, hence they bring marula seeds that are not crushed. The old women we speak to complain that their younger children, especially the females are lazy to assist in the crushing, forgetting that the money made from this is able to put food on the table,” Dlamini said.
He clarified that the facility only starts getting busy after the marula season, which is when they receive bulk of the marula fruits from women around Hlane, but also from areas like Mpolonjeni, Sithobelweni and Siphofaneni. “After realising that most women bring marula seeds that are not crushed, we bought a machine that is able to perform those duties. People need to understand that marula is not just about producing beer but other essentials like soap, different kinds of oils,” he said.
Dlamini insisted that the facility is always active throughout the year, pointing out that they work until December producing the already mentioned essentials other than beer.
“Our facility is not about marula beer but we produce a lot of products, which means there is always activity, even after the marula season. We will soon be launching a new product that will help expand the facility in terms of production. All will be revealed during an official launch ceremony, that will be announced soon,” he assured.
He said even though they have a local market to sell their products, most of these were imported to outside countries, like United States of America (USA), United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Taiwan among others. “We are now considering selling packaged products as opposed to those in bulk, as that will bring us more revenue. All that is part of our new product that we will be launching,” he said.