The South African citrus industry has achieved remarkable growth over the past few years, with 164.8-million cartons of fruit packed for export across the globe in 2022. By 2032, the sector aims to export an additional 260-million cartons a year, contributing 240,000 jobs and R50bn in revenue annually to the SA economy.
There are 124 black-owned citrus operations farming 7,869ha of citrus across the country. Encouragingly, their yields have grown exponentially over the past three years, from just over 2.4-million cartons in 2020 to just over 15-million cartons in 2022. However, it is clear that there is a lot of work to be done to achieve the 50-million carton target by 2032, with partnerships and close co-ordination between government and other role players key to this success.
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Source: businesslive.co.za