Study tallies costs of black spot interventions

The Citrus Growers’ Association and the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum (FPEF) have initiated a study to determine the exact costs of interventions by exporters to meet EU CBS requirements. “South African farmers spend millions of rands on control measures on farms, in packhouses and in ports to meet these EU requirements,” said Justin Chadwick, CEO of the Citrus Growers' Association (CGA) of Southern Africa. “The estimates are of around R1 billion, but that cannot be confirmed,” he said. “In the past season, consignments of fruit already en route to the EU had to be diverted at great cost to exporters. “In some cases containers of fruit had already been packed and had to be repacked so that risky fruit could be removed. There were instances where vessels had already arrived in the EU and containers offloaded only to have to be reloaded onto vessels and then shipped to other markets where they were allowed in.” He said with South Africa facing major disruption of its citrus trade unless the EU accepts that CBS does not carry risk to its orchards or consumers, farmers are going the extra mile to meet the regulations as imposed by the EU – and that costs money. The good news for exporters was the weakening of the rand which had much to do with higher volumes and better returns over the past season. “The rand weakened significantly between 10 and 15% during the citrus season in comparison to last year,” Chadwick told FTW. “That of course has a positive effect on the bottom-line as most of our fruit is sold in euros and dollars. But that needs to be balanced with the fact that farmers faced massive additional costs to eradicate even the possibility of CBS while logistics costs have also increased significantly as fuel and transport increased. At the same time labour costs have also increased.”