Radium, Bela-Bela · Limpopo, South Africa

Organic chilli and herbs, grown and dried on our own farm.

We grow Bird's Eye chilli, peppermint and thyme under Ecocert organic certification, then dry, grade and pack them for export buyers. Every bag carries a lot code that leads back to the field it came from.

Fresh red chillies and leaves on a linen cloth
25 haOrganic farm at Radium, north of Bela-Bela
3 cropsCertified and dried for export: chilli, peppermint, thyme
EcocertCertified organic since July 2024, for the EU and UK
100%Black woman-owned and led

A short list of crops, grown properly.

Three crops are certified and in export production. Two more are in the ground and being tested by buyers. We add a crop to the list only once we can grow, dry and document it to standard.

  • Bird's Eye Chilli

    Certified organic

    Destemmed by hand, washed and dried to the buyer's moisture specification.

    HarvestFebruary to May

  • Peppermint

    Certified organic

    Cut every six to eight weeks. Leaf and stem are dried and bagged as separate lots.

    HarvestEvery 6–8 weeks

  • Thyme

    Certified organic

    Grown in three-year beds. Leaf and stem are separated, dried, graded and packed.

    HarvestJanuary to April

  • Turmeric

    In buyer trials

    An eight-to-ten-month rhizome crop. Samples are with buyers; not yet in our certified scope.

    HarvestJuly to August

  • Ginger

    In buyer trials

    Grown and harvested on our farms while buyers assess quality. Not yet in our certified scope.

    SamplesOn request

Motobatsi team members beside red chillies spread out on raised drying beds
Chillies on the solar drying beds.

From field to bag, on one farm.

Most growers of crops like ours sell them fresh to a processor. We do the drying, grading and packing ourselves, because that is where quality is kept or lost.

  1. Harvest by handPicked or cut by our own team, one field at a time.
  2. Clean and separateChilli is destemmed and washed in borehole water. Peppermint and thyme are split into leaf and stem.
  3. Dry to specificationOn solar beds or in the dryer, to the buyer's moisture target. A chilli batch takes about 18 hours in the dryer.
  4. Grade, bag and codeEvery bag is weighed, numbered and labelled with its lot code.
  5. Store and dispatchOne lot per pallet, and nothing leaves without being checked against the bag register.

Every bag leads back to a field.

Each lot code records where a crop was grown, when it was harvested and how it was dried. It goes on the bag, the pallet, the bag register and the delivery note.

Example lot code, thyme, 2026

RA1THY12-01-26C1RASD

  • RA1Field: block 1 at our Radium farm
  • THYCrop: thyme
  • 12-01-26Harvest date: 12 January 2026
  • C1First cut of the season
  • RASDDrying: solar dried at Radium
  • No label, no storage

    A bag without its full code, bag number and weight goes back for correction before it enters the store.

  • No mixed lots

    Each lot sits on its own pallet. Combining lots means a new code and a record of every lot that went into it.

  • A trace test every month

    We pick a bag at random and trace it to its field, harvest, drying run and storage record. The target is 30 minutes.

Rows of young chilli plants with drip irrigation lines
Chilli transplanted from the trial beds into the production field.

Founded in 2023. Owned and run by its founder.

Motobatsi Organics was started by Kabelo Molautsi Seromo, an engineer who qualified at the University of Pretoria. She owns the company outright and runs it as CEO from Johannesburg, with farming at Radium near Bela-Bela and at Walkerville in Gauteng.

In its first year the company prepared its land for organic compliance, was certified by Ecocert, planted all five crops and signed its first export offtake agreement with a buyer in Germany.

A group of TVET students listening to a farm supervisor in a field
Orientation day for TVET students starting on the farm.

The farm is also a classroom.

Our first students from Majuba TVET College finished 18 months of work-integrated learning with us in March 2025. We continue to host interns and mentor agriculture graduates, and we run practical workshops for emerging farmers moving to organic production.

Organic certification

Ecocert

Certificate no. 287802

Ecocert Organic Standard, recognised as equivalent to the EU organic regulation.

Certified organic, and clear about what that covers.

Our certificate covers crop production and storage for Bird's Eye chilli, mint, thyme, moringa and sunn hemp, for export as organic into the European Union and Great Britain. Turmeric and ginger are not in that scope yet.

Sourcing organic chilli, peppermint or thyme?

Tell us the product, the form you need, the volume and where it is going. We will tell you what we can supply this season and send the certification documents you need.