Our story

South Africa is the economy hub and the most developed country in Africa. Most of the world-famous brands have a manufacturing plant in south Africa in order to shorten the delivery time. Two decades ago, a hospital in DRC needed a machine to do dialysis for its patients. They first contacted several manufactures in Europe just to find out that it will be cheaper to get them in South Africa and the delivery time may be shorten. Also, there were possibilities to take advantage of the regional custom clearance applicable in the SADC region.

Few months after that, similar problem occurred in Gabon and again it was more difficult to procure similar equipment from Europe.

In 2006, a group of individuals wanted to start a farming business and their obvious choice was to try to import the equipments they required from overseas. After several attempts they decided to secure them from South Africa.

In 2007 some clients from Malawi needed to secure foods supplements from South Africa and we were contacted to facilitate the purchase and supply.

None of these transactions went smoothly for several reasons:

1. No business in South Africa could deal with companies that are not local and have no track record
2. Businesses wanted to make sure that they were dealing with companies that fulfill specific requirements
3. The companies wanted to deal with people and not just email addresses and phone calls. They wanted to make sure that their reputations are kept unshaken by only associating themselves with trustworthy individuals and companies.

As we were the main contact for these transactions, we took time but finally identified the problem and that was the opportunity to establish a firm that will solve these problems and shortfalls. Our aim was to make sure that there is no longer a gap between demand and supply and some of these goods were to save lives. This is how Kalm Holdings was born.

Due to our reputation and operational excellence, in 2017 when there was a shortage of Mealie meals in DRC and the country was on the blink of a food disaster. Kalm Holdings was trusted to be the preferred partner to restore the country’s supply from South Africa.