Perishable specialist diversifies into general cargo

RAY SMUTS DRAMATIC DIVERSIFICATION at Fresh Produce Terminals could see the company’s general cargo slice of the cake surge by 10% this year and a whopping 40% within the next three years. But fruit will always remain the priority at South Africa’s largest portside facilitator of export perishables, says MD Danie Maartens, who makes clear the future strategy drive is for FPT to become multi-purpose. An accountant by training, with FPT since its inception five years ago, he does not dismiss lightly the suggestion that diversification on this scale could imply a change in the company name, affirming the question that has indeed been asked by existing and would-be clients. FPT’s handling of bulk and breakbulk has been on the go in the port of Durban for several years, confined mostly to rice and ammonium nitrate imports, but represents a fairly new departure for the Port of Cape Town. By way of example, FPT will this year handle around 300 00 tons of imported cargo, most of it for animal feeds in the Western Cape. A number of major deals are currently in the offing, including a 12-month-a-year steel agreement and a cement contract, aimed at Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. The company operates three berths in Cape Town and four in Durban. Former FPT general manager in Port Elizabeth, Mike Fell, has relocated to Cape Town to take charge of new business development, and in the space of a few months brought aboard a number of important general cargo clients. This against the background of a natural evolution toward shipping perishables in containers and a global trend to shipping breakbulk and bulk cargo in containers. “We, as a company, will have to accommodate changes in order to keep abreast of new shipping trends. This boils down to acquiring more container handling equipment, including a R20 million mobile harbour crane for Cape Town and other attendant equipment to meet future challenges.” FPT already has a new R2.5 million reach stacker operating in Cape Town, with a second planned for Durban.