Committed to Future Generations

SUSTAINABILITY

INVOLVED IN

OUR COMMUNITY

For many decades the Retief Family has been actively involved with, and supporting our local community. We’ve been farming here for 3 generations and are proud to have 3rd and 4th generation employees working alongside us to ensure that Van Loveren remains South Africa’s leading family-owned winery. South Africa has quite a unique history. A story of hope, triumph and overcoming adversary. At Van Loveren we are proud of the small part we play in addressing amongst others land reform and creating a platform for our Employees Trust to unlock sustainable opportunities. In 2004 we were the 1st in the SA Wine Industry, and the very 1st winery in the Robertson valley to successfully conclude a Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) land reform partnership with 116 of our employees and pensioners. We could not have been prouder when in 2008 De Goree was awarded the National Agri BEE project of the Year.

Since 2004, we’ve concluded a further 2 successful empowerment initiatives, Olyfberg (2015) and Middelburg (2018). This brings the black owned grapes harvested by Van Loveren to 15% of our total. Our goal is to increase this to 30% in the next 5 years with new investments and planned expansions. In addition the Van Loveren Employees Trust also owns 25% of the Fives’s Reserve brand, giving employees further access to the value chain. The Van Loveren winery also received its Fairtrade accreditation in 2011 and is a proud contributor to the improvement of production and trading conditions for workers and disadvantaged employees.

OTHER INITIATIVES

Five’s Reserve Bursary Scheme for the children of employees.
Annual fundraiser for 5 local schools via the Java MTB Challenge & Trail Run.
(R 820 000 paid out over the last 6 years).
Supporting and sponsoring local charities and sport organizations.
Subsidy of transport, housing and pre-school fees for employees.

COMMITTED TO

CONSERVATION

95% of South Africa’s wine is produced in the area known as the Cape Floral Kingdom. This is 1 of only 6 such plant kingdoms in the world and, is the smallest, yet most biodiverse areas in the country, sheltering over 10 000 plant species. This is more than the entire fauna and flora habitat of the Northern Hemisphere! The Cape Floral Kingdom is one of 25 recognised biodiversity hotspots, with 70% of the plants found here, and not anywhere else on earth. So conservation is pretty important and at Van Loveren we are proud to do our bit to conserve for future generations.

CARBON HERO

Continuing our sustainability journey we recently received the Carbon Hero recognition award from Blue North Sustainability. This is part of their Confronting Climate Change (CCC) initiative which encourages wine farms to calculate and understand their carbon emissions. We are committed to tackling environmental risks, protecting conservation-worthy land, water and implementing energy-efficient solutions to ensure a sustainable future.

OUR INITIATIVES:

600 ha set aside for conservation, minimizing loss of natural habitat
Alien plant eradication programme
Water-wise management programme
800 solar panels on the winery’s roof (about 30% of our energy is ‘green’)
A Biodiversity Hiking trail educating our visitors

One of the areas we conserve has an incredibly special feature, one of the youngest volcanic pipes in South Africa. It is a melilite pipe, consisting of a fine-grained dark rock with yellow olivine inclusions, and formed about 64 million years ago, around the time the dinosaurs went extinct. This is a rare kind of rock, which originates from beneath the crust of the earth. Geologists speculate that it may be related to a volcanic rock that carries diamonds. None however have been found at Van Loveren. as our meliltite never erupted with lava reaching the surface. This is referred to as an intrusive igneous plug – basically just short of being a proper volcano.