Fruit South Africa (FSA) has called on logistics and transport providers to help ensure industry survival, as South African fruit growers are at risk unless export supply chain services and costs improve.

Deflated returns on export fruit sales, escalating production costs, exorbitant logistics costs, and inefficiency and ineffectiveness at port level are converging to threaten the future of South Africa’s fruit growing industry, says FSA chairperson Justin Chadwick in the run-up to the inaugural Cool Logistics Africa conference, to be held in Cape Town this month.

In an open conference letter, FSA calls on the perishables logistics and transport sectors to rise to the current challenges in a united and positive manner, alongside South Africa’s fruit growers and exporters, to preserve this industry’s 100-year-old heritage and safeguard it for the next generation.

“The fruit export supply chain needs to work, and work efficiently and effectively, if this industry is to weather these hard times. Everybody in the supply chain stands to lose if we do not all focus on this issue collectively. If we do not, then our principals – the growers – will be the first to lose and the 400 000 farm workers who support them will suffer the most. But it will eventually affect us all at some point in time if we do not rise to the challenge,” says Chadwick.

He continues: “We understand the competitive nature of those in the export chain, but everyone shares the frustration [caused by] the current inefficiencies. We should not shrug our shoulders and accept the fact that the losses from inefficiency will just get passed on over the farm gate. We are all indebted to this industry to ensure our growers remain sustainable and the farm workers and their families all prosper.”

FSA and its affiliated members, the Fresh Producer Exports Forum, the Citrus Growers Association of South Africa, Hortgro Services, the Subtropical Growers Association and the South African Table Grape Industry, will use the upcoming conference to share their concerns and seek solutions with local and international transport and logistics providers.

“Taking place at a pinnacle phase for the Southern African fresh fruit export industry, with real supply chain challenges in our midst, this conference is an ideal platform to discuss and debate the issues at hand,” says Chadwick.

Cool Logistics Africa 2012 runs from April 24 to 26, at the Vineyard Hotel, in Cape Town. The event includes preconference site visits to two of South Africa’s leading packhouses, a two-day conference including networking reception hosted by FSA, and an optional one-day postconference operations and technology workshop.

Source: www.engineeringnews.co.za