How this South African living in the US went from drying meat in his laundry room to having a booming biltong business

It used to drive her mad – seeing the biltong her husband was making hanging in their tiny laundry room. There was so much of the stuff there was hardly any space for her to dry the washing.

But Warren Pala had no choice. Space in their home in New Jersey, America, was limited but he was desperate for a taste of home so the only way for him to get his biltong fix was to make it himself.

Fifteen years on, the cramped laundry is just an amusing memory – Warren and Nicolle are now based in Texas, and in neighbouring Oklahoma he heads up the world’s biggest biltong factory.