6 NCT, has, in one form or the other, been effectively in existence for 75 years, since the inception, on 3 February 1949, of The Natal Co-Operative Company limited. 75 years is a lifetime and seen in context of world events, this particular lifetime has been simply remarkable on so many levels. Initially marketing wattle logs to Masonite, membership had grown to 52 by 1950. In a parallel universe, NATO had been founded, the Korean war had started, and the Voortrekker Monument was being unveiled. As the Berlin Wall was being built, the Cuban missile crisis unfolded, and Nelson Mandela was being sentenced to life imprisonment, Wattle’s marketability rapidly increased with wattle bark quotas being introduced in 1963 and requiring the co-op to export several shipments of wattle timber to Italy. In the early seventies, just after the first landing on the moon, and the first successful heart transplant, NCT entered into talks with Transvaal Wattle Growers regarding a central Co-operative. The Central Timber Co-operative Limited was established with Sumitomo engaged to export wattle chips and a chipping plant erected in Cato Ridge. Natal Landbou Kooperasie Beperk (NLK) began servicing the needs of northern Natal members. News of the flames of the Soweto uprising in 1976 and Concorde taking its first supersonic aircraft into the sky, was all the rage whilst the NCT Haulage Division was being established. Laeveld Tabak Kooperasie Beperk become the fourth member of CTC. During the period of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station’s construction, the introduction of television to South Africa and the death in detention of Steve Biko, an oversupply of pine and Eucalyptus had led to NCT’s watershed export of Eucalyptus logs to Spain in 1978. By the time South Africa had built its first operational nuclear weapon and the first cases of Aids had appeared in the USA in 1981, NCT was exporting two shipments of either pine or Eucalyptus logs per month into Europe and the Middle East. CTC had relocated its chipping plant into the burgeoning Richards Bay precinct and NCT had been awarded the accolade of Runner up Exporter of the Year by the SA Foreign Trade Organisation. As the internet was born in the early eighties and the Bloukrans Bridge opened the highest concrete arch in Africa, NLK announced the closure of its timber division, with their Northern Natal members opting to join NCT. Sappi offered NCT a 10-year hardwood contract and NCT haulage division relocated to New Guelderland (closer to Richards Bay) just shy of the internet being born in 1983. A serious drought in 1982/83 affected timber yields leading to the implementation of the CTC Afforestation Scheme providing loans and timber supply arrangements. As PW Botha was being elected State President, CTC was acquiring farm properties in Zululand, Northern Natal and the South-Eastern Transvaal. As a world-wide stock market collapse occurred in 1987 just after the self-same PW Botha had declaring a State of Emergency, Natal suffered the worst floods in decades which restricted timber movement and proved the worth of the NCT depots that had recently been established. In early 1990, NLK left CTC leaving TWK and
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