Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Managing for Profit
The courage, tenacity, integrity, compassion and entrepreneurship of the Lowveld’s Hall family hold many lessons for business and family dynamics.
It’s 1917, and a young farmer, WH Rood, has settled with his wife and three-yearold son in the Crocodile River Valley on the outskirts of Nelspruit. Their son falls ill with malaria. With no doctors in town, Rood is referred to Grace Hall, the wife of HL Hall. The couple have lived in the area since 1888 and own Riverside Farm (due to become Mataffin Farm in 1923).
Using a speaking tube from the Nelspruit railway station, Rood manages to contact Lanion, one of Grace’s sons, who tells him that the Hall family has just received news that his brother has been killed in action at Bullecourt in France. He suggests that Rood write a note to Grace, describing his child’s symptoms, but says he is not sure whether his mother will be in any state to reply.
Rood writes the note, and a short while later is astonished when Grace and HL both arrive at his farm. Despite their grief and shock over the death of their own son, they had ridden over on horseback immediately on receiving the note to tend to Rood’s son.
This amazing story, told in a letter written by Rood to the Lowvelder newspaper in 1965, epitomises one of the hard-wired characteristics of the Hall family that has endured through the ages: compassion for others.
HL Hall & Sons (hlhallandsons.co.za) recently celebrated its 125th year in business. The company commissioned former deputy editor of the Financial Mail David Williams to produce a book about the history of the business. The result is the recently published Pioneering Generations.
Early years
Part South African and Lowveld history, part Hall family memoirs, but mainly about the business and its trials and tribulations, it is a remarkable tale. There are so many lessons in it about entrepreneurship, family business governance, strategy, management, marketing, technology and production.
In the early years, the family had to contend with the sheer remoteness and harsh living conditions of their environment. Then the Anglo-Boer War raged through the area. Just 12 or so years later, the
First World War took all four sons off the farm and, as previously mentioned, claimed the life of one of them.
The new Pretoria-Delagoa Bay railway line became the source of the Halls’ fastgrowing prosperity during the 1920s and 1930s. This enabled the family to sell fresh produce by direct mail order to the burgeoning population on the Johannesburg gold fields. In its heyday, the scheme eventually reached volumes of 164t/day, 365 days of the year.
The business was on its way to becoming a vast mixed-farming business, with citrus eventually as its mainstay.
The fourth generation remains firmly in control
Starting in the 1940s, HL Hall & Sons gained a reputation for contributing substantially to the welfare of its employees through housing, schools and clinics, an approach that persists today.
Citrus collapse
Tragedy, however, continued to stalk the family as the second and third generations both lost young sons being groomed for a role in the business. But, just as Grace had done in 1917 when she went to the help of the Rood family, the Halls gritted their teeth and persevered.
They survived the collapse of the citrus industry in the area due to greening disease in the 1970s and 1980s, and reinvented themselves into one of the world’s leading avocado businesses. Today, the fourth generation remains firmly in control.
Pioneering Generations leaves two overriding impressions. Firstly, just how far-sighted, resilient, competent and never-say-die the family has remained through all four generations. And secondly, how firmly the family has held onto its unwavering set of values such as respect for others, compassion, integrity and humility.
What a business! What a family!
What an example to us all.
• For a copy of the book, email contact@halls.co.za.