Paul Clüver runs a fourth-generation fruit and wine farm in South Africa's Elgin area. He explains why reliable John Deere tractors and John Deere Financial services matter to his operation and his commitment to sustainable long-term farming.
Our recipes for success is our desire to produce fruit on a world class basis, both on the apple and pear side, but also in the vineyards and then by extension producing world class wines. And we can only do that given with the people that we work with. I'm Paul Kluver, I'm part of a family business that's been farming in the Elgin area for well over 100 years, 120 years now. And we farm this fourth generation family business together with three of my sisters, my father and my brother in law. Yeah, so Elgin was established in the modern era of wine growing in the mid-1980s and that was when the desire was where could South Africa produce cool climate grapes? Niederberg was one of the pioneers in this area. They approached us and together we started a joint venture. My father became the first commercial grower of grapes in the 1980s. So currently we farm just over 80 hectares of vineyards and the majority of our sales are still in South Africa. But we export to well over 30 countries all over the world, of which Europe and the UK is our biggest exporting markets, which is quite amazing because we look, we grow about 500 tons of grapes, we grow about 10,000 tonnes of apples and pears, and we see that continuing into the future. So we run a tractor fleet of just under 30 tractors, predominantly small orchard tractors, and that feeds exclusively John Deere for us today. And mainly because they are able to look after our demands. What is imperative these days, whether you are apple grower or wine grower, is that we are competing globally and not just with South African growers. And for that you need to be world class. And to be world class means that you need your equipment to be reliable when you need them, they need to be precise, need to be able to look after the job. We have a fairly demanding terrain in the sense that we are very hilly. But at the same time, one of the global pressures is diesel consumption, not only from an economic point of view, but also from an environmental point of view. And John Deere ticks all those boxes. Traditionally, we never used to finance our tractors until we actually were made aware of John Deere Financial. And for us it makes absolute sense, mainly because of the interest rates that they are able to provide us, but secondly also because of the cash flow and management in the whole process. Our family's been working with John Deere tractors as long as I can remember being a little boy. You've got John Deere tractors like the 1140 that we've had, I think for well over 30 years. And they're still going, but their ability to support and maintain tractors is of critical concern to us and they are able to do that in certain cases where they are not able to support us with spare parts. They've actually gone over and beyond and actually supplied us with additional equipment. Our long term dream for our family business is sustainability. And we've been farming here for well over 100 years and we still like to continue farming here for well over 100 years. And what that means is that we need to look after our environment, we need to look after our people and our society, and we are only able to do that if we run a competitive business in a world class environment.
