Ray Smuts AS FRESH Produce Terminals reaps so it sows, this year and next being no exception. The company has committed some R50 million to improving quayside cooling facilities in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Maputo. The FPT board has already okayed a proposal to spend the lion’s share of the capital expenditure - R38 million over two years - on a 3840-pallet cold store between Addo and Kirkwood in the Eastern Cape’s Sundays River Valley, but this has yet to be approved by the main Capespan board. Internal systems development is high on the agenda and the intention is to spend R8 million on an Enterprise Resource Solution including a standardised warehouse management system for all centres due to be up and running by 2005. FPT’s first overhead rail-mounted gantry crane, designed to accommodate those specialised reefer customers who may wish to ship their fruit in containers, has been slightly delayed due to infrastructural snags but should be operational by Christmas. Says MD Ronnie Kingwill of the R7 million project with its 126 reefer plug points: “I don’t think there is going to be a big swing to containers since we have the gantry crane facility, but it’s important that growers bring their fruit to us and then have a choice of either going into a container on deck or specialised reefer underdeck.”
