Vineyard rows at dawn in the Western Cape

About the firm

A South African advisory firm with an African mandate.

Founded in 2008. Specialist-led. Trading as Auctus Agri since 2026.

Auctus Agri is the market-facing brand of J MAMBO CORPORATION (Pty) Ltd (CIPC Reg. No. 2021/912891/07), the corporate home of a South African agribusiness practice founded in 2008. The Auctus Agri brand is the public expression of work that has continued without interruption for eighteen years.

The firm operates from Newton Park, Port Elizabeth, in South Africa's Eastern Cape — a region whose agricultural economy combines Sundays River Valley citrus, Gamtoos Valley horticulture, deciduous fruit, dairy, and a deep smallholder hinterland. The geography matters: most of our private-sector work is within a half-day drive of base, and most of our donor-funded work in southern Africa is within a day's flight. We do not operate satellite offices. We do not maintain standing overhead. We work from where the agriculture is.

How Auctus Agri operates

Specialist-led. Network-resourced. Evidence-led.

Specialist-led

Engagements are run by the senior specialists who pitched the work — not handed off to a junior team or an offshore writing pool. The team brings depth across agronomy, plant breeding, trade compliance, applied research, and data science. The composition is matched to the brief; the seniority does not change.

Network-resourced

Where project scope, geography, or specialist depth requires, Auctus Agri assembles project-specific teams from a curated network of named technical associates. Associates are independent specialists with prior collaborative track records and direct contractual relationships with the firm. We name them in proposals when their role is material.

Evidence-led

Every Auctus Agri engagement produces a written deliverable that another professional could replicate. The methodology is named, the data sources are cited, and the recommendations are scoped so the client can act in a defined time horizon. We are not in the business of slide decks that read well and survive nothing.

A network practice

A curated network of southern African professionals.

Auctus Agri operates as a curated network of senior practitioners across South Africa and the SADC region — agronomists, plant breeders, data scientists, trade specialists, applied researchers, and regulatory practitioners. Engagements are staffed to the brief from within this network, not assigned to a fixed organisational chart.

The network model does three things at once. It matches the specialism required to the practitioner doing the work, at senior depth. It keeps overhead low, which keeps day rates within standard short-term consultant bands. And it lets the firm scale up for large multi-country evaluations without diluting seniority — every named associate has prior collaborative track record with the practice.

The practitioner who scopes an engagement is the practitioner who does the work. There is no junior team to inherit the brief, and no offshore writing pool to draft the report. The claim is organisational competence built from within a defined network, not credentials on a wall.

Where we work

Southern and eastern Africa, primarily.

The firm's primary working geography is southern and eastern Africa. Headquartered in South Africa, with active fieldwork experience in:

South Africa (Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo) · Zimbabwe · Botswana · Namibia · Mozambique · Zambia · Tanzania · Kenya

Selected donor-sector engagements have extended to West Africa and the Sahel. Trade-advisory work routinely covers EU buyer markets (Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy), Middle Eastern import gateways (UAE, Saudi Arabia), and Asian destination markets (China, India, Vietnam).

Sectors and value chains

A generalist agribusiness practice.

Auctus Agri is a generalist agribusiness practice. The work has spanned, in roughly descending order of accumulated hours:

Citrus · Deciduous fruit (apples, pears, stone fruit) · Table grapes · Avocados · Wine · Vegetables (open-field and protected) · Maize and other field crops · Seed production · Tobacco · Industrial hemp · Medicinal cannabis · Dairy and beef · Smallholder cropping systems · Climate-smart and regenerative systems · Post-harvest logistics and cold-chain

A more granular capabilities matrix is available on the Sectors page.

On the name

Why the generic name, and the rebrand.

The legal entity has traded as Professional Agricultural Services since 2008 — today the registered entity is J MAMBO CORPORATION (Pty) Ltd. The name dates from 2008, when the practice was almost entirely South African and the descriptive name worked. As the work has become more international — including engagements with the World Bank, the African Development Bank, FAO consultancies, and European commodity buyers — the name has carried two costs: it collides with at least ten unrelated firms globally using "Professional Agricultural Services" or close variants, and the SEO and email-confusion drag has become impractical to manage.

Auctus Agri is the practice's new market-facing brand. The Latin root is augere, meaning to grow, to enlarge, or to augment — paired with agri for the sector the firm works in. J MAMBO CORPORATION (Pty) Ltd remains the contracting entity. Invoices, contracts, SARS filings, and banking are all under the legal name. Everything else is Auctus Agri.

Speak to the team

A 30-minute scoping call is the standard entry point.

The call is free, structured around your specific brief, and produces either a written scoping note within 48 hours or a clear "this is not the right fit" within the call itself.

Book a 30-minute scoping call →