Penny Streeter OBE is one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in South Africa and the UK. At one time living in a homeless refuge with three children, Penny has since built a business empire from startup today valued at £75 million, out of sheer hard work and tenacity.

Her core business, the medical recruitment agency A24Group, which she founded in 1996, records a post-tax profit of £9m in its published accounts, achieved through an outstanding business model that she created and evolved. The firm provides more than 100,000 hours’ work each week for healthcare professionals in the UK and South Africa.

Since 2016 she has also built a major wine, hospitality and leisure business across both countries, Benguela Collection.  

HOMELESS TO HONOURS

It all began in Zimbabwe where Penny was born. Her father Peter Stiff was in what was then the Rhodesian Police – and after the Lancaster House Agreement the family had to leave Zimbabwe in 1979, with few possessions. She was then educated at Alberton High in Johannesburg until 1983.  

Her parents’ marriage broke up and Penny left South Africa for the UK aged 12 with her mother Marion. She then started work in the recruitment sector after leaving school at the age of 15, following a short spell as a beauty therapist. When she walked into a recruitment agency she was offered a job on the spot as a consultant. She realised this was her niche – as someone with unusual tenacity who loves to engage with and help people practically. Promotion to branch manager quickly followed. With her enterprising spirit, Penny started her first recruitment company aged just 22, but after it collapsed and her marriage fell apart, she had to move into a homeless refuge for two years. She was pregnant with her third child. In 1995, Penny decided to try again, setting up her second company. She financed the venture by moonlighting as a children’s entertainer. The new company was successful straight away, becoming a provider of financial services’ staff to NatWest before switching to the healthcare market a year later.  

Penny had spotted that other medical staffing agencies turned their phones over to answering machines out of office hours each day and at weekends; she identified a major opportunity for a 24-7 service for healthcare to meet urgent demand for temporary medical personnel, arising from staff illness and other causes.  

What especially differentiates the A24Group and its founder is the unique management and service delivery model that Penny continues to evolve. It focuses on delivering outstanding service, highly efficiently. It is based on her deep understanding of every process of the enterprise, from building the business from the ground up – financial, systems, marketing and others – questioning everything, identifying new opportunities and striving to do better. 

WINE & HOSPITALITY

In 2004 Penny moved backoffice sales and ICT operations to Cape Town. This was largely because of full employment and a shortage of available staff near her offices in Surrey. Since then, the A24Group has launched its medical staffing operations in South Africa. Today she employs over 300 staff in Bellville and operates two nursing agencies: Nursing Services of South Africa and Ambition24hours South Africa, as well as Ambition24hours Locums, for GP’s and allied healthcare professionals.   

With A24 thriving, Penny branched out into wine production and hospitality. It started with the acquisition and substantial investment in the Benguela Cove vineyard in South Africa’s Walker Bay wine region, with a 450-ton winery and 173 acres of vines. The vineyard was part of the residential and wine farm estate where Penny lived and which she bought when the previous owner died in 2013. 

Today her Benguela Collection hospitality and entertainment group includes other properties in South Africa and the UK. In 2016 Penny identified new opportunities internationally for a South African-style wine farm experience and created the first ‘golf and wine estate’ in the UK. Some 38,000 vines were planted at the 500-acre Parkland site at Mannings Heath Estate, at Horsham in West Sussex.  

In 2017 Penny acquired a neighbouring property in the UK, Leonardslee Lakes and Gardens. She has restored the 240-acre site, which is fast becoming a major tourist destination since its April 2019 opening. It features probably the finest woodland gardens in England, Grade I Listed and first planted in 1801, and a vineyard. Wine production is yet another key focus. The 66,000 vines planted across both UK estates are estimated to crop at some 75 tons, to produce 50,000 bottles of sparkling wine each year.

WOMENS’ ENTERPRISE

CORPORATE & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Penny Streeter is a champion for women entrepreneurs in the media and from the conference platform. She is regularly interviewed on BBC and other broadcast news and business programmes (BBC Breakfast News, Working Lunch, News24, Sky News), as well as by print media (Financial Times, Telegraph, The Times). As a conference speaker, her mission is to inspire other women in business with her story – such as at the Leaders in London Conference, with Richard Branson and Bob Geldof. With her experience of homelessness living in a refuge, in 2018 Penny was invited to become Patron of the Hermanus Night Shelter Association (HNSA) in South Africa, and hosts fundraising events for the charity.  

For more information www.benguelacollection.com. Contact: Press@leonardsleegardens.co.uk  

RECOGNITION & INFLUENCE

AWARDS

OBE (Order of the British Empire) 2006 New Year's Honours for ‘services to enterprise’  

CBI (Confederation of British Industry) Entrepreneur of the Year, 2003  

‘Management Today’ magazine Top 100 Entrepreneurs Top woman, and No. 13 overall for two years, 2003, 2004  

Sunday Times Fast Track 100 ‘Fastest Growing UK Companies’ 2004, 2003, 2002 – No. 1 in 2002  

South African Chamber of Commerce’s Business Woman of the Year 2019