The partnership with Massmart will offer incubated companies in the various Raizcorp programmes the opportunity to be selected as preferred suppliers. Raizcorp’s role is to nurture these small businesses and assist them to bring their products to market according to Massmart’s requirements and quality standards, and facilitate and accelerate their access to Massmart’s divisional buyers.

Massmart CEO, Grant Pattison states that local procurement makes commercial sense. At the same time, the company is excited to be able to make a strong contribution to enterprise development. “While black economic empowerment (BEE) is a strong focus of Massmart’s strategy,” said Pattison. "This initiative is also about building small businesses through this new opportunity.”

Raizcorp’s CEO, Allon Raiz, says that the partnership holds the opportunity for more local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage with Massmart and potentially benefit from its retail distribution network. “Here we have one of Africa’s retail giants using its procurement power to stimulate local SME development and growth.”

The agreement will also open doors to companies that would like to fund enterprise development programmes as a means of meeting their broad-based BEE scorecard obligations, by offering them the opportunity to sponsor the admission of potential suppliers to the Raizcorp incubation programmes.