Our first shipment to the Seychelles

In 2023, an ordinary Tuesday at TanzPro Greens' Mitaranda farm became the start of something the company had been working toward for the better part of a decade. Since its founding in 2014, TanzPro had built its farms in Mkuranga District along Tanzania's coast around one goal: growing organic produce good enough, and reliable enough, to reach demanding markets overseas. That year, the first weekly export shipment to the Seychelles turned that goal into a routine.

The order itself was modest in size but significant in what it represented: 200 kilograms of organic passion fruit, cherry tomatoes, and red peppers, destined for kitchens on the island of Mahé. It was the kind of order that, a few years earlier, would have been difficult to fulfil on schedule. By 2023, it was simply how a Tuesday worked.

That readiness had not come from Mitaranda alone. In 2018, two years after Mitaranda began, the Kisele Organic Project started along Mtwara Road and grew to three greenhouses, giving TanzPro a second site producing to the same organic standard. Between the two projects, the farms had the volume and consistency an export order like this one required.

That order also rested on trust built over years, not just that Tuesday's harvest. Mitaranda's team had grown from the six women who joined the project in 2016 into a much larger contracted network, each holding a guaranteed market for what they grow. An order of 200 kilograms bound for the Seychelles was, in that sense, a test the farm had been preparing for since its very first season.

Harvest began at sunrise at the Mitaranda Organic Project, the farm that started TanzPro's organic story back in 2016 with six women growers working greenhouses and open fields. Picking at first light matters - produce harvested before the heat of the day holds its texture, sugars, and shelf life far better than crops picked later.

The process began the moment the order was confirmed by the buyer in the Seychelles. TanzPro's export workflow is built around that confirmation as the starting signal: harvest, sorting, and grading all happen within hours of it, rather than being scheduled around a fixed weekly cycle that might not match what a resort kitchen actually needs that week.

That growth had followed a clear trajectory. TanzPro's first commercial harvest at scale came in 2019, supplying restaurants, hotels, and retailers in Dar es Salaam. The 2023 Seychelles shipment marked the next stage of that trajectory - proof that the same farms could meet the tighter timelines and quality demands of an export market.

From the field, the produce moved quickly. Each piece was hand-harvested, sorted, and graded within hours of being picked, a process built to catch anything that would not meet export quality before it ever reached a carton. What passed inspection went straight to pre-cooling at the packhouse, dropping the temperature to slow ripening and lock in freshness for the journey ahead.

Grading is not a cosmetic step. Produce that does not meet export quality is set aside for local markets instead, so that only fruit and vegetables capable of surviving the packing, flight, and final plating make it into the export cartons bound for Mahé. That discipline protects the reputation of every shipment that follows this one.

Once cooled, the passion fruit, cherry tomatoes, and peppers were packed into food-grade export cartons designed to protect the produce and keep it properly ventilated in transit. By Wednesday, the shipment was on its way to Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam for dispatch.

The following day, Thursday, that same fruit and produce were on the lunch menu at three resorts on Mahé. From sunrise harvest in Mkuranga to a plated lunch in the Seychelles, the entire journey had taken less than 48 hours.

The produce itself was grown to the same organic standard recognised under the East African Organic Mark (Kilimohai) and TanzPro's membership in the Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement (TOAM), with no synthetic chemicals used at any stage from planting to harvest. For a resort menu built around fresh, chemical-free ingredients, that background mattered as much as the speed of delivery.

For an island nation that imports much of its fresh produce, that kind of speed is not a luxury - it is the difference between wilted stock and a menu that tastes like it was picked that morning.

None of that timeline is accidental. It depends on an integrated cold chain that treats every stage - harvesting, grading, cooling, packing, and flying - as one continuous process rather than a series of separate handoffs. A delay at any single point would have cost the shipment its freshness advantage.

It also depends on the people who grow the produce in the first place. The women farmers of Mitaranda, and the wider network of more than 50 contracted farmers across TanzPro's operations, are trained in organic cultivation and supplied with certified seed, so that what reaches the packhouse is consistent enough to plan an export schedule around.

That reliability is now the base on which TanzPro's export business runs, supplying more than 200 tons of organic produce annually across five markets, from the Seychelles to the Gulf, Russia, and East Africa. The Tuesday harvest that once felt like a milestone has become the pattern the company repeats, week after week.

TanzPro Greens Ltd welcomes conversations with buyers and partners interested in sourcing organic Tanzanian produce on a similar schedule. Contact the operations team by phone at +255 713 398 485 or by email at om@tanzpro.co.tz.