Tailored systems accommodate fruit and wine sector

The Western Cape is an area of opportunity, especially in the retail and agricultural sectors, said Gregory Bruce, the Cape Town-based representative of Core Freight Systems, the software service providers specialising in SA freight forwarding and customs clearing. “The retail industry is an area of increasing interest,” he told FTW, “especially in light of the fact that many of the major players in this sector have their head offices in Cape Town – and hence much of their strategic thinking and systems competence is resident in the province.” According to Bruce, an imperative is to optimise the processes employed by all the participants in the supply chain, whether the goods are destined for local consumption or onward distribution to operations elsewhere in the African continent. “Our target is the continuous improvement of the SA leg of this supply chain – either through facilitating the interface of data with other applications, or through the potential internal efficiencies inherent within the application itself,” he said. “As an example, we have been successful in the facilitation of the duty drawback process. This is applicable where importers claim from the SA Revenue Service (Sars) the customs duty paid on stock originally imported for local consumption but subsequently re-exported. Production of the DA63 documentation required can be a tiresome manual exercise. As a result we have heard of instances where companies have just not bothered. However, with appropriate design and technology flexibility, this can be addressed, resulting in substantial savings to the importer.” Agricultural exports are also an important contributor to the Western Cape economy. Notwithstanding the impact of the global recession, Bruce said, these have grown significantly over the past decade – with major contributions from the fruit and wine sectors. “We have a number of clients servicing this sector, and have developed functionality within the system to accommodate industry-specific data requirements.” CAPTION Gregory Bruce … ‘success achieved in facilitation of the duty drawback process.’