At the same time as you’re squeezing a lemon over your fish ‘n chips in Gqeberha, a consumer anywhere from Dubai to Shanghai could be doing the same – and the chances in all three cases are very good that the lemon was grown on our doorstep, in Addo.
This is a small illustration of the global reach of our local citrus industry, with the Eastern Cape the country’s biggest lemon producer and exporting more lemons than the USA, Brazil, Egypt and Italy do individually.
South Africa is the world’s second largest exporter of citrus fruit with about 65%, or 2.25m tons, of our crop of lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit and soft citrus destined for international markets, leading the country’s agricultural exports in value.
Citrus exports have grown by more than 40% in the past decade to about R20bn annually and this trajectory is set to continue – the Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) forecasts an increase from the current 150m 15kg cartons per year to 200m in the next five years, and 255m by 2030.
Bringing the picture closer to home, the Eastern Cape is the second largest citrus producing-province, while the Sundays River valley is the country’s biggest single production area with this year’s harvest projected to reach over 30.5m cartons, increasing to 40m over the next five years.
Black citrus farmers are gaining encouraging momentum in the export market, with a 40% increase in volumes pushing their exports to 1.6m cartons last year.
This progress towards a more inclusive industry is driven by the CGA and Sundays River Citrus Company through the Grower Development Company that assists black citrus farmers with business and technical support, funding and equipment to develop scalable and sustainable, export-driven, operations – a development initiative that is literally bearing fruit and is considered a benchmark in the agriculture sector.
Government, in the National Development Plan and other policies, sees the citrus industry, with its strong exports and labour-intensive employment, as a priority sector with growth potential, especially in stimulating rural employment and sustainable livelihoods.
Employment in the citrus industry nationally is estimated at more than 40 000 jobs on farms and in packhouses (including over 4 000 in the Sundays River area), more than doubling in the picking and packing season.
The coming expansion in citrus production has the potential to create new jobs throughout the entire value chain. Forecasts range from 5 500 to 11 800 permanent jobs, and 15 000 to 25 000 temporary or seasonal, and up to 58 000 upstream and downstream from the orchards.
All in all, an industry with a great success story to tell and a bright future.
However, we will be growing into a vacuum if we can’t master the logistics infrastructure chain that puts our fruit in a supermarket in London or Kuala Lumpur reliably, on time and at peak quality.
South Africa’s ports are congested and under-equipped; freight costs are rising; there is a chronic lack of shipping containers to pack fruit into; and, despite major investments at Addo and in the ports, cold storage facilities are pressured for space – all this in the peak of the citrus season.
The reasons are complex, interconnected and both local and global, and no one role-player can be held responsible to fix the situation.
There is the Covid-19 pandemic, weather impacting on port operations, the ongoing impact of the July unrest and the cyberattack on Transnet’s IT network, global dynamics such as port and terminal closures due to the pandemic, and the American government’s stimulus of consumer demand to kickstart their economy, leading to massive demand for sea freight from east to west, and a lack of capacity on the routes we need to the Middle and Far East.
Shipping lines faced with spending a month in South African waters to make all their port calls, at a cost around US$30 000 a day when waiting outside a port, have changed their schedules, some skipping the Eastern Cape ports, or have reduced their capacity or taken the country off their schedule altogether.
While 27% of South African citrus is exported through the metro’s ports of Ngqura and Port Elizabeth, much of the Eastern Cape’s production is trucked to the Durban and Cape Town ports for export, further adding to congestion and delays there and taking work and money out of our local economy.
It is not all doom and gloom, though.
On the positive side, we know that the citrus industry is seen as a priority by government, and we have their financial and policy support.
We know that Transnet senior management are listening, and acting, and the move of the Transnet National Ports Authority headquarters to the Port of Ngqura is a positive for building relationships and understanding.
Transnet’s ports master plan and recent requests for information to gauge the interest of potential private partners in infrastructure and operations at the ports of Durban and Ngqura are very welcome, and essential.
The CGA and its members meet regularly, virtually, at times daily, with Transnet to assess the situation and demands, and the association has met in the last week with some of the major shipping lines to outline the problems and understand each other’s positions.
What we need now is to get all these “moving parts” and role-players working together with the same level of interconnectedness and synchronisation that we need from the logistics infrastructure.
If the logistics infrastructure works, our ports and container terminals will have more capacity and productivity, more shipping lines will be eager to call at SA ports, freight costs will be reduced, and our country will have greater ability to export – improving infrastructure creates a national business opportunity.
The will is there, progress is being made, and we are optimistic of smoother sailing ahead for those lemons (and oranges, naartjies and grapefruit) from Addo to the tables of St Petersburg, Amsterdam and Hong Kong.