Our story
The passion for a continent and respect for the people who populate it have become a company. The German Udo Reinhardt and the Italian Leandro Stanzani both shared this love and respect, became friends and founded AURUM Africa.
For Udo, the first encounter with Africa occurs at the age of 16, while travelling by train from Spain to Morocco, but the real passion starts 30 years later during a trip between South Africa and Swaziland. Udo and his wife Conny are immediately fascinated by the women’s industriousness and the ingenuity of their small companies, organized in cooperatives. After the loss of his 18-years-salesman job, Udo decides (maybe fate) to create a commercial company called GAFPRO, the acronym for Good African Products.
With GAFPRO, Udo begins to import jewels, ceramics and other objects and to sell them in the European Fair Trade circuits. However, he does not forget the small company in Swaziland that produces natural cosmetics. He becomes the German distributor for Swazi Secrets and he meets Leandro thanks to this project. The common ideals and passions lead them to build a professional relationship and a true friendship that is still strong after many years.
Leandro’s passion for Africa also has distant roots. After his first trip to Kenya in 1983, a never-ending love story begins. The heat, the colours, the sunsets, the savannahs, the rivers, the deserts, the animals and, above all, the people fascinated him. All the his experiences he lived were intense and he captured them through thousands of photographic shots. He travelled three hundred thousand kilometres among Namibia, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana and Eritrea. Leandro met many people and many friends in these countries who are waiting for him to “come home”. The work and projects of African women’s cooperatives are an issue Leandro really cares about. He believes that these women have Africa’s destiny in their hands.
For this reason, Leandro begins to import quality handcrafts, cult masks, tribal jewellery, paintings and sculptures from these cooperatives until he meets Udo in Swaziland and Marula Oil. Udo and Leandro begin to import Swazi Secrets products together, but unfortunately after a couple of years the Cooperative is forced to close due to the challenges of globalization. They try several times to put the cooperative back on its feet but, failing to do so, they are forced to start searching in neighbouring countries for new suppliers. Finally, their perseverance pays off, and they find a small company in Namibia that produces organic Marula oil.
AURUM Africa was born in 2016: a company that puts on the market natural products of assured origin and the highest quality
AURUM Africa Mission
- We import, promote and distribute only high-quality products for which organic certifications can be obtained from internationally acknowledged third parties (E.g., COSMOS, Ecocert)
- We use raw materials collected sustainably from trees/shrubs/plants that grow spontaneously in the wild and not from farming
- We work on the principles of Fair Trade and environmental sustainability, improving the work of local women communities
- We use as much as possible recyclable packaging
- We respect, follow, update and we are available in real-time for Distributors and Customers
WE strongly believe that success can only be measured in the social economical impact that we can achieve, together with people and with nature, in a sustainable way.
Our Namibian supplier has been audited by Ecocert for “Fair for Life” during May 2021. An important certification that testifies our commitment to support the women involved in the production process of our oils.