Quality of data as important as cargo movement

Record agricultural exports are placing new demands on South Africa’s perishable supply chain, with the industry increasingly turning to integrated digital systems to improve visibility, traceability and efficiency. The country recorded a new agricultural export record in 2025, with exports increasing by approximately 10% year on year, while agricultural imports rose by around 4% over the same period. According to Leon Jansen, projects and development manager at ShipShape, much of this growth is linked to fruit and other temperature-sensitive products, resulting in greater volumes moving through already pressured cold-chain networks. “This growth brings both pressure and opportunity. Practical logistics constraints such as ports, transport routes, reefer availability, cold-store capacity and seasonal congestion remain important, particularly during peak export periods,” he said. “But higher volumes also expose weaknesses in the way information moves with perishable cargo. The same data is often captured multiple times, information does not always move seamlessly between systems, certification processes can still be paper intensive, and there is often limited visibility of cargo status across the supply chain.” Jansen said this was why electronic export documentation was becoming increasingly important to cold-chain efficiency. Building visibility Recent developments that have brought eCert administration under PPECB are expected to improve coordination between inspection, certification and export processes. Building on this, the Tracking Unit Manager (TUM) is emerging as a key eCert module for improving traceability across South Africa’s perishable export chain. TUM provides a shared record for pallet movement and status data that can be used by approved stakeholders in the perishable supply chain. For the cold chain, this represents a significant move beyond traditional pallet-out and pallet-in file exchanges towards a more integrated and traceable export process. Jansen said one of the biggest opportunities lay in improving how information was transferred between the various participants in the cold chain. “As cargo moves from producer to packhouse, cold store, forwarding agent, port and ultimately the export process, the quality and timing of data become just as important as the physical movement of the product,” he said. “A pallet, certificate, addendum, inspection result or shipment status must be immediately recognisable and usable by the next participant in the chain. Any breakdown in that flow can create delays, duplication and unnecessary administration.” Tackling obstacles According to Jansen, initiatives such as TUM are helping to address these challenges by creating a shared traceability layer across the perishable export supply chain. “The value of TUM is that it creates a common source of information that can be accessed and used by multiple parties. This reduces friction in the movement of data, provided industry systems are able to connect effectively and organisations maintain accurate master data and timely status updates,” he said. Jansen said another challenge facing the industry was the increasingly technical nature of the perishable export environment. “Farmers, exporters, cold stores and logistics service providers are all operating in an environment where digital integration is becoming a requirement rather than an option,” he said. The next step “As the TITAN and eCert platforms continue to evolve, industry participants need systems that can adapt to changing data requirements, integration standards and electronic documentation processes. For organisations without dedicated IT resources or specialised software, keeping pace can become a significant challenge.” He said logistics platforms and software providers had an important role to play in helping industry participants connect their day-to-day operations with the growing electronic certification ecosystem. “Technology should simplify compliance and improve efficiency, not create additional administrative burdens. The role of software providers is to make these integrations as seamless as possible so that exporters and logistics operators can focus on moving cargo rather than managing data,” said Jansen. He said ShipShape’s recently introduced Export Booking Module had been developed with this objective in mind, integrating perishable sea- export bookings with TITAN and eCert to eliminate duplicate data capture and provide a single workflow for users. LV