The Citrus Growers Association South Africa was cautiously optimistic about 2024 as fruit on the trees indicated an increased crop but there were concerns about getting the fruit to markets, CEO of the association Justin Chadwick said on Friday.
In South Africa the citrus season starts with lemons in February and ends in September. The pome fruit sector is also looking to 2024 more optimistically due to lower exports from other major pome producing regions following hail damage in 2023.
“There certainly is potential for another record-setting amount of cartons exported. As things stand, our growers have, under difficult circumstances, ensured there will be large amounts of citrus when harvesting truly ramps up starting in April, supplying consumers around the world with our sought-after fruit,” Chadwick said on Friday in a newsletter.
On pome fruit, the industry body Hortgro said that with the 2024 harvest underway and a week to ten days earlier than anticipated, all indications were for promising apple export volumes and a slightly below-average pear export crop.
Hortgro forecast a 7% rise in apple exports and a 1% uptick in pear shipments.
Chadwick said the logistics situation in South Africa had not improved substantially and “we hope that congestion at the ports will get addressed before our growers start packing”, he said.
He said the selection last year of International Container Terminal Services (ICTS) for the upgrading of the Durban Container Terminal Pier 2, was welcome and the association had engaged with ICTS on the project.
“Hopefully, this public-private partnership’s positive effects will already be felt in the coming season. The operational success of the partnership is critical to the export economy, especially considering its potential as a new model for all national ports,” he said.
Chadwick said another serious challenge was the EU’s phytosanitary regulations regarding Citrus Black Spot (CBS) and False Codling Moth (FCM).
“These regulations are unscientific and discriminatory…these protectionist trade measures might limit the export of especially oranges. We continue to fight the regulations and call for speedy action by the South African government at the level of the World Trade Organization.”
He said shipping costs had spiked after attacks on ships in the Red Sea had disrupted international trade, and this could affect citrus growers if the situation continued for an extended period of time.
On Thursday, Transnet’s Durban Terminals said in a statement, “As the peak retail season comes to an end this month, the Durban Container Terminal (DCT) Pier 2 is prioritising terminal fluidity ahead of South Africa’s (SA) citrus season.”
The terminal is providing a rail link solution for its customers’ import containers to a back-of-port facility seven kilometres from the terminal, as a means of reducing the number of trucks calling the terminal.
Managing Executive at the Durban Terminals, Earle Peters said, “From the onset, it has always mattered how we handle both waterside and landside traffic hence our fruitful collaboration with both shipping lines and truckers”.
DCT Pier 2 had averaged 3896 twenty-foot equivalent units per 24-hour period last week.
Peters said, “We are in the process of scheduling customer engagements that aid our 2024 planning. There’ have been a lot of learnings throughout this experience, and we ought to ensure we never find ourselves in the same situation as we did in October 2023”.
In October congestion at the ports hamstrung exports amid vast shipping bottlenecks.
During December, Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) took its public private partnership model even further by putting out a tender notice to appoint a panel of service providers as Terminal Operators of Last Resort, for a period of three years, at the eight commercial seaports.
The operators were intended to close “port operational gaps…where terminal operator contracts had been suspended or terminated.” The selected panel would bid to provide an interim service to assist the ports authority to mitigate the disruption of cargo-handling operations during the appointment of a new terminal operator through the concession process.
“The scope of the required panel also includes the import/export, transit storage, handling and distribution of cargo on and off the vessel with appropriate terminal equipment, as well as the distribution of cargo to inland customers through rail or road,” Transnet said in a notice.
Despite the forecasts of good harvests, fruit exports via the Cape Town port have plummeted in December due to equipment breakdowns, insufficient labour, a lack of maintenance and declining productivity – along with strong winds – which resulted in backlogs and delays, with fruit producers forced to start their peak trading season behind schedule.
News24 said data from the provincial government and Transnet had showed that, on average, only 7 717 twenty-foot equivalent containers were moved through the harbour per week over the past four weeks - compared to a target of 20 000 containers.
The average waiting time for vessels reached 8.2 days in the first week of January with waiting time averaging 4.2 days between December 11 and January 8, against a target of one day.
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