Fruit industry asks for lower duties on generators

REPRESENTATIVES meeting to discuss power cuts in the fruit and wine industry, were literally in the dark when a 90-minute outage hit the office of Western Cape MEC, Cobus Dowrey. Dr Malcolm Dodd, cold chain specialist at the Perishable Products Export Control Board, told FTW he was asked by the fruit sector to attend the session, along with representatives of the wine and grape industries, organised agriculture and Eskom. “The message was conveyed to Eskom about the importance of the fruit industry to the Western Cape economy in terms of earnings and jobs and that these outages were unbelievably disruptive in the middle of the picking season, besides impacting on the quality of the product.” Dodd says questions revolved around the possibility of Eskom scheduling outages between 4 am and 10 am, which would impact less on fruit, and whether it could assist in easing the duties of imported generators. A response is awaited from Eskom.