Eqstra Flexi Logistics (Flexi Logistics) is a dynamic company within the mobility solutions industry. Flexi Logistics is a division of Eqstra Holdings Limited, an integrated leasing and capital equipment group. The core activities of the group are focused on the contract mining, industrial and mining equipment distributorships, passenger and commercial vehicle leasing and logistics services in the commodity sector.
“Flexi Logistics has a transport base just outside Leandra in Mpumalanga,” said Benedict Msumba, The Carbon Project Manager. “It is here that we have launched this groundbreaking initiative. The community of Leandra will immediately be impacted through employment, education, training and skills through the planting of 60ha of bamboo trees and cash crops.”
FTFA has partnered with Renewable Energy Solutions (RES) to assist with this new and exciting project. RES designed the multi-cropped Agro Forestry Project allowing this project to be a bio-energy project which will ensure maximum yield and utilisation of the land. In total 13,800 bamboo, 12,500 legume oilseed trees, 12,000 edible oil seed trees and 36 hectares of food crops will be planted.
To ensure that the best interests of the community were catered for, cooperatives (partnerships) were formed through SEDA and the Department of Agriculture who assisted to recruit and train the community members of Leandra. Each member has access to a hectare of land to plant and manage on a long-term sustainable basis.
Thus, sixty previously unemployed members of the Leandra community have now been empowered as enterprise development beneficiaries and are developing skills that will allow them to enter the New Green Economy. The four cooperatives have each selected their own management, who all have attended business management training. They will be going through the last of the training material and will be planting all the energy and cash crops by October 2011.
