Lourie van Reenen Turned Calf Feeding Into South Africa's Beefmaster Group

Who is Lourie van Reenen?

Lourie van Reenen is the founder of the Beefmaster Group, a South African family beef business with a processing plant in Kimberley and a feedlot near Christiana. He is described in a Food For Mzansi interview as the youngest in his family, in his twenties when he started and raised on a mixed farm.

This profile covers only his public business record. The sources reviewed give no birth date, so the years field reads living.

How did Beefmaster begin with a few calves?

In the 1960s, feed such as molasses was plentiful, and van Reenen began raising and fattening small calves. He started with eight oxen and eight heifers. Calf feeding was unusual in South Africa at the time, and by his own account his family had little faith in it, so his first goal was to prove the idea could work.

He later learned that American producers had experimented with calf feeding from 1958. He contacted them, and the two sides exchanged information. That detail matters because it shows a young farmer looking abroad for technical help instead of relying only on local practice.

Building an integrated beef company

Agri News history of the group dates the founding of Beefmaster to 1965 and says it became a fully integrated operation by 1986. The Food For Mzansi interview says he kick-started the Beefmaster Group in the 1980s, so the two accounts frame the timeline differently: a 1965 start, with the group taking its larger shape in the 1980s.

Integration here means the company owns more than one step between calf and customer. Its feedlot sits near Christiana in North West province, while the abattoir, processing and head office are in Kimberley. Retail outlets are listed at Boksburg and Olifantsfontein near Johannesburg.

The company says it is a South African family business and a specialist producer of quality beef products for local and international buyers. Agri News reports record export performance under chief executive Gert Blignaut, and a 2025 community investment of nearly R900,000 for youth skills, early childhood education, financial literacy and community health.

The cattle, the region and the workforce

Beefmaster is the largest private employer in Kimberley, according to the 2022 interview, with more than 1,000 employees. Van Reenen said the company honored staff with up to 35 years of service, which he called a proud moment.

Agri News adds that the group buys Nguni weaners directly from breeders for its feedlots, a purchasing choice it says supports emerging farmers and diversifies supply. The Nguni is an indigenous southern African breed, and buying it directly from breeders connects a commercial feedlot to smaller producers who might otherwise lack a market.

What the record does not show

The sources do not give slaughter capacity, brand names, export volumes or financial results, and this profile does not guess at them. They also do not report controversies or honors.

Readers who want the wider picture of how feedlots fit into ranching can browse the ranching pages on farm.FM. A related read is a farm.FM story about feedlot cattle.