South Africa stops citrus exports to EU early

Tomorrow DAFF (Dept of Agriculture, Forest and Fisheries) will inspect the last South African citrus headed for the European market. The decision does not apply to citrus from the Citrus Black Spot (CBS) -free regions of West and North Cape. Traditionally South Africa stops exports to the EU from October 15 as from that date they are subject to the import duties. With this decision, the export comes a month earlier.

Deon Joubert, Special Envoy to Europe from the Citrus Growers Association calls it a proactive decision. "This year there have been eight interceptions and that is less than last year. Today one interception was revoked and more may follow. We are pleased with how the season went. We could have gone on but wanted to show that we are responsible about exporting. Europe is a good market and at this time of the year we did not want to risk more interceptions. We appreciate the position that the exports to the EU has and I think we have proven that our additional measures helped."