Discrepancy between fruit packed and shipped raises concern

As the citrus export season ends, the continuing annual discrepancy between volumes packed (85.5m 15kg cartons this year) and product actually shipped (75.7m cartons, according to PPECB) has citrus industry officials calling on government to implement EDI as a way of ensuring more accurate accounting. “The difference when you are dealing with large volumes can be significant. There are discrepancies between varieties as well, but these vary,” Justin Chadwick, CEO of the Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) told FTW. The biggest gap between fruit packed and shipped occurred with Valencias (37.1m cartons packed v 29.8m shipped), while the smallest gaps occurred for navels (19.4m packed v 19m shipped) and grapefruit (14m v 13.5m). “All packed fruit is fruit packed onto pallets that have been inspected and certified for export. One to two percent of these I believe make it to port but there may be a packaging or other problem and the fruit is either diverted to the local market or destroyed,” said Chadwick. However, the majority of fruit is probably actually shipped, but an undercount happens when pallets are repacked into containers. “A container may be recorded as holding 20 pallets when in fact it contains the fruit of 23 pallets. The reason I believe is that CGA collects levies for every packed pallet. If an exporter is not actually shipping those pallets he is entitled to a refund, but we are not receiving the claims,” said Chadwick. The answer he said is EDI, and exporters are pushing government for implementation of the electronic capturing of data. “Once a pallet is captured by a scanner it is in the system for good. EDI is useful for several reasons, but it would also allow us to accurately track export shipments,” said Chadwick.