The Henley Business School Africa has released a paper on the performance of South Africa’s fresh fruit exports, in collaboration with the Gordon Institute of Business Science and Stellenbosch University. The paper emphasises that maintaining strong exporter-importer relationships could be critical to keep the industry on top. The industry, which is the biggest contributor to the agriculture export sector by value, has achieved remarkable success.
The largest exporter of fresh fruit in the Southern Hemisphere, the industry generates more than US$3 billion (about R55 billion) in foreign exchange annually and has created over 400,000 employment opportunities throughout the value chain. But rising competition and logistical challenges could threaten the industry’s sustainability, the paper argues.
Decaying infrastructure, bottlenecks at ports, rising shipping costs, electricity and water crises, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns are among the key challenges outlined in the white paper.
The researchers surveyed 65 direct exporters of fresh fruit in South Africa, looking for the behind-the-scenes inter-firm relationship behaviours that were the most significant predictors of export performance and sustainable exporter-importer relationships.
On average, respondents had been exporting their fresh fruit for 15 years, and exporting to their largest foreign buyer for 12 years. Just over 81% of their fresh produce sales were derived from directly exporting to 35 buyers and exporting nearly 27% of their products to their largest foreign buyer.
Source: farmersweekly.co.za