Six years ago after a citrus congress in South Korea, South African growers noticed that there was an appetite for the Star Ruby grapefruit. Then last year, after various visits to the country during the past years officials from the Fresh Produce Export’s Forum and the Grapefruit Variety Focus Group had a meeting with the [...]
UK High Commissioner Nigel Casey says that post-Brexit, South Africa and the SADC-Mozambique bloc will be able to negotiate one-on-one trade deals with the UK, and not be tied to European Union restrictions. South Africans need not fear Brexit as it will be good for this country, UK High Commissioner to South Africa Nigel [...]
Agri SA is concerned about the rising unemployment rate and wishes to remind the government that investor confidence, especially in agriculture, is imperative to get job creation on track. The increase in South Africa’s unemployment levels to a record high of 29% indicates that an organised and focused strategy applied by all South Africans is [...]
The Joburg Fresh Produce Market will soon receive a major facelift. This follows the approval of a mid-term expenditure framework allocation of R300 million for the recapitalisation of mission-critical infrastructure that support the Market’s core business. The Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Economic Development, Councillor Leah Knott, has welcomed the investment, saying that [...]
The water situation looks better in the Boland and Cape Town but alas, that doesn’t tell the full story of the Western Cape: the Klein-Karoo has barely had rain or snow this winter and the dam levels are shocking: two important irrigation dams, the Kammanassie Dam and the Stompdrift Dam are 8% and 2% full [...]
Harbour personnel are cautiously optimistic that the situation will start improving at Ngqura Port Terminal (NPT), but it will take two weeks, at the least, to get back on schedule. Staffing shortages and low productivity at all of the country’s containers terminals mean that Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) will have to work around the clock [...]
Usually the situation at Durban Harbour is the citrus industry’s greatest cause for concern but this season the situation at the Port Elizabeth container terminal (PECT) and the new Ngqura (Coega) container terminal (NCT) is “absolute chaos” and “a major crisis”, according to various citrus exporters, affecting fruit exports from the region. Exports are happening [...]
In a recent customer advisory, MSC said that cargo from Durban and from Ngqura to Europe would be loaded as usual on ships of its South Africa-Europe service, but that the vessels would skip their normal Cape Town call to make up for lost time. Connections from Cape Town to Europe will be maintained by [...]
In June this year, in a ceremony at Letsitele - in the Limpopo province of South Africa - BioBee South Africa, together with its shareholders: BioBee Sde Eliyahu, ZZ2 and Hishtil SA inaugurated a new production facility. During the ceremony, Ran Gan-El, BioBee Sde Eliyahu’s CEO announced that these new state of the art facilities [...]
The soft citrus season is busy catching up on an initial slow start due to delayed colouring in many areas. With some southern regions earlier and the northern regions later, there may be a clash in the timing of late mandarins. In the far and central north of the country harvesting is underway of late [...]
