Resilient exporters fight back

Nowhere has the perseverance of the fruit export sector been more acutely demonstrated than in the disquieting sequence of events at the Vorsterowned Mahela Boerdery in Limpopo this year. In August they suffered from a severe frost; in September a devastating fire razed their pack house to the ground; and in November a hail storm wiped out their entire avocado crop. The avocado trees looked like they had been consumed by a tsunami of mopani worms. But the Vorsters have picked themselves up, dusted off the setbacks, and put their shoulders to the wheel again. The state-ofthe art packhouse that they are now building means that this cloud fortunately has something of a silver lining to it.