Fund Compliant Curing Infrastructure for Your Contracted Growers
You fund the $75,000 village. Marillion designs, builds, commissions, and operates it entirely on your behalf. You pay $1.60/kg all-in for the complete curing service — cure, grade, bale, deliver, with full barcode traceability from field to warehouse.
Side marketing — contracted farmers diverting cured tobacco to competing buyers — is a significant loss for Zimbabwe's tobacco merchants. Marillion's physical custody-transfer model eliminates it structurally: farmers deliver uncured green leaf, which has no resale value and cannot be diverted, and Marillion controls the entire process from that point forward.
Professional, controlled curing lifts leaf up the quality tiers and protects value in a soft market. Combined with 2029 firewood-ban compliance and audit-ready labour and environmental standards, this protects your buying licence and your access to export buyers from Day 1.
A Fully Contained System — The Farmer's Work Ends at Delivery.
Farmer delivers green leaf
The grower delivers uncured green leaf to the curing village. Their work is complete. Green leaf has no resale value and cannot be side-marketed.
Marillion cures, grades & bales
Professional solar-thermal curing, grading, and baling under one controlled, audited operation.
Merchant receives finished tobacco
You take delivery of fully cured, graded, baled, barcode-traceable tobacco — ready for market.
Custody transfers at green-leaf stage. Side marketing is structurally eliminated — there is nothing sellable to divert.
How Marillion Compares to the Old System.
| Standard | Old System | Marillion |
|---|---|---|
| Curing energy | Firewood — banned from 2029 | Solar-thermal + biogas curing villages |
| Child labour | Largely unregulated | No under-16s; 16–17 with consent; no hazardous work (Altria TLP-adapted) |
| Green Tobacco Sickness & heat | Rarely addressed | Mandatory PPE and annual GTS/heat-stress training |
| Forced labour | Not audited | Prohibited; workers interviewed during audits |
| Audits | Minimal | Annual independent third-party-style audits |
| Grade pricing | Auction-exposed, variable | Minimum Guaranteed Price per grade |
| Grading transparency | Opaque, often disputed | Written standards, joint review panel, arbitration |
| Payment | Slow, opaque deductions | Within 14 days, itemised deductions |
| Input credit | Often punitive | Cost of funds + disclosed margin; penalty capped at +3% |
| Chemicals & environment | Unmonitored | Prohibited-chemicals list, IPM, soil & water standards |
Standards adapted from the Altria Tobacco Leaders Program (TLP) — the benchmark demanded by international buyers.
In a Soft Market, Cure Quality Is the Margin.
2026 leaf prices are running roughly 25% below 2025, and a large share of this season's crop is grading poorly. The single biggest lever on price a grower controls is cure quality — and that is exactly what a Marillion curing village delivers.
| Quality tier | Indicative average | What it reflects |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 2 — premium, well-cured | ~$3.43/kg | Ripe, excellent colour, low defects |
| Tier 3 — good | ~$2.75/kg | Good colour and maturity |
| Tier 4 — fair | ~$2.22/kg | Some immaturity or handling loss |
| Tier 5 — low, poorly cured | ~$1.64/kg | Poor cure, defects, breakage |
Indicative TIMB auction averages as at July 2026 — not a Marillion price offer. Actual price is set by grade at point of sale. Figures illustrate the price spread driven by cure quality.
The current small-scale farmer averages around 1,750 kg per hectare. As a member of a Marillion curing village — with better inputs, agronomy support, and controlled curing — yield rises to approximately 2,500 kg per hectare, an increase of over 40%. Each village supports 10 farmers growing one hectare each, lifting village output from around 17,500 kg to 25,000 kg. A merchant funding 10 villages ($750,000) therefore supports an estimated additional income of approximately $22,500 per village — around $225,000 per year across 10 villages — before grade uplift and compliance value. Yield and income figures are estimates based on improved growing practices and vary by season, crop quality, and auction prices.
The Merchant Return.
| What improves | How Marillion delivers it | Your gain |
|---|---|---|
| Post-harvest recovery | Controlled curing eliminates mould, over/under-cure and conditioning loss | Minimum 40% curing loss avoided |
| Saleable volume | Same crop, same farmer financing — more kg reach market grade | ≈7,500 extra saleable kg per village (≈30% of a 25,000 kg crop) |
| Grade & price | Uniform professional cure lifts leaf up the quality tiers | Illustrative grade shift: +5% into Grade 1, +15% into Grade 2, +10% into Grade 3 |
| Breakage & handling | Proper conditioning reduces leaf breakage in baling and handling | Minimum 50% breakage reduction |
| Side-marketing loss | Custody transfer at green-leaf stage — nothing to divert | Structurally eliminated |
| Compliance | 2029 firewood-ban and buyer ESG requirements met from Day 1 | Licence & market access protected |
Grade shift figures are illustrative and vary by season, crop quality, and leaf type. Loss and breakage figures reflect controlled-curing performance benchmarks.
Funding to Secured Supply
Each curing village is a fixed building block that brings contracted farmers and their green-leaf into a compliant, traceable supply chain. Funding villages under the Marillion management-contract model scales your secured supply in defined increments. The figures below illustrate the funding-to-supply relationship at increasing levels of commitment.
| Villages Funded | Annual Green-Leaf Secured | Farmers Contracted |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | 500,000 kg | 200 |
| 50 | 1.25M kg | 500 |
| 100 | 2.5M kg | 1,000 |
| 200 | 5M kg | 2,000 |
| 500 | 12.5M kg | 5,000 |
| 1,000 | 25M kg | 10,000 |
Illustrative funding-to-supply capacity under the management-contract model — dependent on village construction build rate, farmer onboarding capacity, and seasonal offtake agreements. Not a guaranteed delivery schedule.
Green-leaf secured is calculated at 25,000 kg per village — the improved yield achieved under the curing-village model, up from a current-practice baseline of approximately 17,500 kg.