Backlog of citrus cleared at Durban

As the South African citrus season progresses, again there are delays at the Port of Durban. This is by no means an unusual situation as this happens every year.

One exporter, puts it down to a few different reasons: There is more citrus coming into the port than it can handle, the situation has been exasperated by strict controls for CBS and a lack of planning and cold storage at the port.

A lot of congestion has also been caused by the imbalance of containers, meaning that when the fruit arrives into the port there are simply not enough containers to go round. Mitchell Brooke, Logistics Development Manager at Citrus Growers Association said that the latest backlog has now been cleared by chartering reefer vessels to take fruit to the EU and Russia.

Nicci van Niekerk from FPT agrees that the volume of fruit is too much for Durban port to handle and present cold storage facilities are not adequate, this season FPT had to sub-contact outside cold stores to cope with the demand. She said the increased volumes of citrus being exported in containers because it was supposed to be cheaper has lead to less flexibility.

The lack of cold storage creates another problem, if citrus has been more than four days out of cold storage it must be inspected again for CBS, this is time consuming as there are not enough agricultural inspectors to go around.

Another element which has added to congestion is that NYK and SeaTrade pulled out of a plan to ship 30,000 pallets from Maputo at the beginning of the season, a spokesman from NYK said they pulled out due to lack of clients for the service.

Looking forward to next season there certainly are moves afoot to improve the situation. FPT hope to trial a new fully integrated IT system to control arrivals at the port, ensuring trucks arrive to load a specific vessel not just at random.

There is also the possibility to utilise Moputo and Cape Town ports. According to the exporter, the infrastructure is there, all it needs is for Trans Net to lay on a locomotive to bring the fruit to Cape Town. Both FPT and CGA are in favour of shipping from other ports.

Brooke said that a strategy session is scheduled next month to look at developing infrastructure to, among other things, load containers on the farms to improve the flow at ports and to look at diverting citrus to other ports such as Moputo and Cape town.