Anton van Zyl

At an early stage in his career, Anton identified as an Entrepreneur and Innovator who had the skill and ability to develop and grow the capacity of products throughout a diverse market sector. He has the spirit and passion to harness people’s imagination to instigate creativity and progression, whilst being commercially minded.

His strengths lie in the Identification, Mapping and Implementation of opportunities, matching the Product-on-offer with Information whilst meeting Client Expectations. His strategic Management of ‘Turn-key Constraints’ and ability to Build Capacity all the while Monitoring and Evaluating the process with consistency and integrity identifies him as Outcome Driven, but with a Balanced Approach.
Through his natural ability to bring out and facilitate the visionary aspects of people by introducing insightful questioning and innovative thinking he can work with individuals to perform at their best to achieve results, thereby structuring a vast array of ideas into one cohesive plan for the business.
Anton is a trusted catalyst, lateral thinker, and empathetic decision-maker who is gifted in assessing business situations, instilling confidence and providing practical action-oriented support and guidance.

These are the attributes that make Anton an accessible Mentor with immense People Skills having the ability to match expertise with enterprise requirements.

• Most recently, setting up ViabilityConsult as a business catalyst in Agri-business. Client base stretches into Africa, and focusses on Pre-project phase of a variety of investment opportunities.
• Farmed with stone fruit, destined for export and local market and in the process initiated the Value Bags concept of stone fruit with a leading SA retail group which turned into a major platform for selling smaller fruit at a highly increased value to the producer. All the leading retailers in SA soon followed this trend.
• Developed and owned a sawmill specializing in the harvesting, processing and marketing of alien Eucalyptus species in the Western Cape, adding value to Eucalyptus timber for industrial applications. One of his strengths was the understanding of his customers’ requirements and subsequent developing of a range of products, which replaced existing, more costly alternatives.
• One of the 4-man ‘start-up’ team that started Dole South Africa, growing a producer-base from zero to being a mayor export player in fresh produce from SA in 2 years, interfacing South African Producers and the different European marketing offices.
• Developed the Industry Handling Protocols for deciduous fruit in the early 90’s, which served as precursor for Global GAP and a variety of industry certifications.
• Directly involved with Agri- related Development and Community Projects.