Marula Magic — The Project

The Marula Tree

90+ yrs

Fruiting lifespan

7–10 yrs

Age at first fruit

500–3,000 kg

Fruit · mature tree / year

Jan – Mar

Primary fruiting window

Multigenerational

Cultural use · Shangaan households

A mature marula tree standing alone on the lowveld — the matriarch species of the Sand catchment

The marula was already worth something here. We are building the balance sheet around that fact.

The Shangaan people have lived alongside the marula for generations. The fruit is fermented at the end of summer. The kernel is crushed for oil. The tree is called nkanyi. It is a presence in weddings, in rituals, in the seasonal rhythm of the homestead.

A marula tree reaches over fifty feet at maturity. It starts producing fruit at seven to ten years old and keeps fruiting, annually, into its hundredth year and beyond. A single mature tree drops between five hundred and three thousand kilograms of fruit in a good season — from January through March across most of the Lowveld, stretching into December–May depending on rainfall and altitude.

What the project does is take that existing cultural and economic relationship and connect it — at the ends — to two things it has never been connected to before: a carbon accounting system that pays for the tree standing, and a global skincare market that pays for the oil in the kernel.

Neither connection replaces the local use of the marula. Both extend it.

We are not bringing a new tree. We are bringing the market to a tree that has been here longer than any of us — and will be here for longer still.

The Operating Model

Seed → tree → fruit → oil.

The value chain is four stages, each of them run at the community level. Nothing in this loop is outsourced to a distant contractor. The people who grow the tree are the people who harvest the fruit are the people who process the oil are the people who hold the long-term stake in the landscape.

Community Nursery

Indigenous marula saplings are raised in community-operated nurseries inside the catchment. First jobs. First infrastructure. First wages in a carbon-financed rural economy.

Custodian household collecting marula fruit at first light during the February harvest window

ii.

Household Harvest

Custodian households collect the fruit off the ground during the February–April harvest window. Fruit is cleaned, pulped, and the kernels are hand-extracted.

Cracked marula kernels tumbling from a processing chute into a collection bin

iii.

Micro-Enterprise Processing

Kernels are aggregated at community-level weigh points, paid for on the spot, and cold-pressed into marula oil at a local processing facility. Value is retained in the catchment.

iv.

Global Offtake

Certified organic marula oil is sold into international skincare and food-grade markets under forward offtake agreements that lock in price before the harvest begins.

Every rand of margin the project retains is a rand that stays inside the catchment. This is why the carbon is the beginning of the business model, not the end of it.

Proof of concept

The revenue model, proven.

February to April 2026. The first full marula cycle — from fruit-fall to the processor's scale.

Marula fruit dropping from the tree during the first-harvest window — Fruit drop

Custodians separating marula kernels from fruit pulp and shell fragments — Separation

Filled and labelled kernel sacks laid out on the ground at a village collection point — Bagged at the village

A flatbed truck loaded with hand-labelled custodian kernel sacks — each bag tied to a named household — Custodian-tagged

Custodians weighing sacks of marula kernels at a village collection point — The weighpoint

A truck-load of kernel sacks arriving at the processor shed at dusk — Arrival at the processor

Harvested by custodians across the landscape. Aggregated at village weighpoints. Delivered in custodian-tagged bags to our global offtake partners. The revenue model moved from plan to practice in a single cycle.

The First Harvest

Proof, not projection. Everything on this page is measured and real. When the numbers grow, the page grows with them.

February to April 2026. The first time the model ran end to end.

The 2026 harvest is the project's first proof point. Not a pilot — a live run of the full value chain, from household collection through to kernel aggregation, weighing, payment, and handover to processing.

Portrait of a marula custodian holding a collection crate — first harvest, Mpumalanga, 2026 — Custodian · Mpumalanga · First harvest 2026

Feb – Apr

2026 harvest window

The full active collection season, from first fruit fall through final aggregation at community weigh points.

In verification ·

Kernel volume · households · kernel-to-oil yield

Figures from the first harvest are being cross-checked against weigh-point receipts, custodian payment records, and processor intake logs.

Q2 2026 · Audit pending

Proof, not projection

Why we are not forecasting

Disclosures on this page will be actual measured outcomes from the 2026 harvest. No modelled numbers. No illustrative scenarios.

Benefit Sharing

How the revenue moves through the catchment.

The benefit-sharing architecture is designed so that the household is the primary beneficiary of its own fruit, the community is the primary beneficiary of the shared processing infrastructure, and the landscape is the primary beneficiary of the long-term carbon revenue. The three tiers are not competitive — each is funded from a different point in the value chain.

Household

Paid at the weigh point, on the day, at an agreed rand-per-kilo rate. The fastest, most direct income stream in the model. This is why the custodian is willing to walk the tree for forty years.

Overhead view of a sorting operator hand-checking marula kernels on a processing conveyor

ii.

Community

The oil-processing margin funds community-level infrastructure — nurseries, wages, logistics, storage. This is the tier that builds the enterprise layer inside the catchment.

iii.

Landscape

Verified VCU revenue funds the permanence of the forest itself — monitoring, replanting, custodian incentives, Traditional Authority benefit share. This is the tier that carries the forty-year horizon.

The oil has somewhere to go.

The difference between a community enterprise and a charitable pilot is whether there is a buyer waiting at the end of the supply chain. The project is building its offtake book before the trees reach full fruiting capacity — not afterwards. Forward agreements are how we underwrite the household income that makes the carbon permanent.

Market

Registered under South Africa's Bioprospecting, Access and Benefit-Sharing regulatory framework.

Skincare

International natural-skincare brands. Forward offtake agreements for cold-pressed marula oil under provenance-verified supply chains.

Food grade

Culinary and wellness channels. Marula oil as a premium edible oil into specialty retail.

Fermented fruit

Beverage partners. The pulp and fruit has its own parallel market; the project is scoping a closed-loop use for the non-kernel fraction of every fruit.

Custodian trust

A reserved share of margin flows back into the custodian trust structure — the vehicle that holds the long-term stake on behalf of planting households.

The Forty-Year Horizon

The carbon pays for the planting. The oil pays for the keeping.

Carbon finance makes the first tree viable. Marula oil makes the fortieth tree unavoidable. Long after the crediting period closes, the household that has been harvesting oil for thirty years has no reason to cut the tree down — and every reason to plant the next one. This is what permanence looks like when it is not enforced at gunpoint.

Participate in the marula economy

The supply chain is in motion.

Through our partnership with Cirebelle, kernels harvested by custodian households across the catchment are processed into certified cold-pressed oil and connected to global offtake markets. Cirebelle handles the value-added processing — we grow and collect. Together we close the loop.

If you are a buyer, retailer, or brand looking to source verified, provenance-backed marula oil with a direct conservation and community story — the conversation starts with Cirebelle.

Become an offtake partner through Cirebelle →

The marula is how we build the economy that outlasts the carbon market.