Teen bitten by the fish bug .
Schoolgirl Rikalize’s passion for a movie has turned into a successful business venture
WHEN the bell signals break time, the schoolgirl turns her attention to her phone. Not so she can sit under a shady tree and chat with friends – this teenager has a farm to run and it’s time to check the app that runs her rapidly growing business.
With 12 tanks and 20 000 fish to look after, 15-year-old Rikalize Reinecke from Roodeplaat, Pretoria, is one of South Africa’s youngest successful entrepreneurs.
It all began with a movie back in 2011. As a nine-year-old, Rikalize was captivated by the film Dolphin Tale and her interest in aquaculture was born.
Winter, the dolphin featured in the movie, had in real life been rescued from a crab trap. Since her starring role, Winter has received a prosthetic fin and now lives at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA) in Florida in the USA, where people around the world can view her activities thanks to the aquarium’s website and cameras.
After seeing the film, Rikalize discovered Winter’s website and read one article after another on fish farming. Every so often she’d hand printouts to her father, saying, “Dad I want to farm with fish.”
It was a passion that would become an obsession – and ultimately a commercial success story.
Her father told her he’d let her farm fish only once she was qualified and knew what she was doing. So one day, when an advert for an agricultural management course on Winter’s website caught her eye, Rikalize put her plan into action.
Soon the determined schoolgirl (aged 12 at the time) and her dad were on a plane to Grahamstown where Rikalize attended a five-day course in agricultural management.
She passed and in the plane on their way back home she again raised the matter of the fish farm and reminded Danie of his promise.
“You told me you’d help me when I’m qualified,” he recalls her saying.
One condition he’d insisted on was that she’d be involved in all aspects of the business, even with building tanks and filtration plants and caring for and harvesting the fish.
Rikalize started out with one homemade tank and 1 000 fish. Today her business, called La Pieus Aqua, is a fully operational fish farm that she runs on her family’s smallholding
“I showed her how to do everything and after three tries she had to do it herself. Now she’s even building filtration systems without input from me,” says Danie, who has an electronic engineering degree and does consulting work and system integration and implementation.
RIKALIZE, a Grade 9 boarder at Afrikaanse Hoër Meisieskool in Pretoria, goes home at weekends to devote time to her business. “I have no free time,” she says. Her family are behind her all the way. Mom Hanli, a procurement and HR manager, is always on hand to offer love and support. Rikalize’s 11-year-old brother, Gert Lodewyk, is a keen game breeder and rearer.
And during the week? The app on her phone allows Rikalize to keep a close eye
on her fish enterprise throughout the day. She receives SMSes if there’s a power failure, if water levels drop or temperatures change. She can then ask her dad or their two full-time employees to attend to any problems. “The cameras zoom into the eyes of the fish,” she says with a smile.
Her farm consists of four divisions that support and feed into one another. The first is referred to as the Nursery School. It’s a hatchery, nursery and quarantine facility with 13 000 juvenile fish in various tanks.
Among the fish she farms are tilapia (including Mozambique tilapia), sharptooth catfish and grass carp.
Rikalize keeps strict control of the water quality, which she monitors with special chemical test kits.
A few metres along is the area for all the “fingerlings” (the term for when juveniles reach the size of a pinkie finger). The objective is to grow the fish to a size of about 200 g in these four tanks with a capacity of 7 000 litres each.
Right next to the tanks is an attractive, self-built greenhouse that houses the aquaponics (where plants are used to filter out waste). The tanks’ “dirty” water is filtered by the aquaponics system, then feeds the seedlings, which draw their nutrients from the water.
In her nursery Rikalize cultivates 22 plant species that she also sells to restaurants and delis. They include lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet melons and several inds of herbs. About 400 plants are sold each week.
Next Rikalize takes us to the Daps (decoupled aquaponics system) facility, which isn’t directly linked to the fish farm but plays a vital role. All waste water generated by the farm is channelled here to be filtered for reuse.
Before the system was introduced last year, the day-to-day operations wasted about 2 500 litres of water a day, but this has been reduced to 450 litres.
Rikalize’s target for 2017 is to sell a ton of fish a month to restaurants, chef schools, fishmongers, delicatessens and wholesalers. Her 12 tanks will allow her to market one tank of fish each month and start again. She ended 2016 on a successful note, having sold three tons of fish and 2,8 tons of produce.
“I make enough money to cover my overheads, pay two salaries, buy fish food and electricity – and there’s a bit extra which I use to buy fry every second month.”
SHE describes her dad as her own minister of finance and her right-hand man on the fish farm. He’s trained her so that in his absence she can run it on her own.
“Another of my conditions was that she helps with everything, so I’ve taught her to build filter systems, to connect pipes and even to drill,” Danie says.
“I show her three times only, then she’s on her own,” he adds as he feeds the hungry fish. Rikalize takes over from him and tells us her fish eat seven times a day, “so they can grow nice and big”.
She smiles as she explains each step to us – and corrects her dad when he gets it wrong.
Because she’s not yet 18 her dad acts as the managing director of the fish farm. They own the business on a 50/50 basis but when Rikalize turns 18, the business will be registered in her name.
Her dream is to be able to introduce her self-sustaining aqua and plant systems to needy communities in future. “Just think how it could change people’s lives,” she says, beaming.
She pauses. Then, rather seriously, says she has to work hard at school to get good marks so she can go to university. She’s already saving to study to become an ichthyologist and one day work with “fish-pertise”, as she calls it.
It’s easy to forget she’s 15 – until she talks about life outside the fish farm. Rikalize loves going to movies and having sleepovers with friends, as well as fitting in cross-country running and rowing. She also plays the violin.
“We’ve passed the stage of pride,” Danie says. “First it was incredible what she’s achieved but now it’s a registered business. Now we have to work very hard.”
Rikalize pats her three dogs, then glances back to her fish farm and says, “There’s no age to dreams and you’re never too young to make a difference.”