The Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) has announced that it intends to develop a new strategy to increase the use of rail transportation for South African citrus exports.
CGA logistics development manager, Mitchell Brooke, noted that the association had contracted technical consultant and part-time lecturer at the School of Shipping, Andy Connell, to help them do this.
He said that this development would be focused on Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Zimbabwe in order to see a “radical” uptake of rail transport for the 2018 season in those regions.
“Given the growth expectation from these regions [were] already prevalent during the 2017 season, it is strategically important to increase the use of rail transportation to offset the growing demand for road transportation over the coming years which simply won’t cope,” added Brooke. “Rail transport is working reasonably well (with a marginally higher uptake in volume transported this season) and we are confident in promoting this development further.”
