Although the Chinese market offers vast opportunities for South African table grape exporters and a way to diversify their markets, an industry head says two obstacles are standing in the way of ramping up trade.

SATI CEO Willem Bestiber

South Africa Table Grape Industry (SATI) CEO Willem Bestbier told www.freshfruitportal.com the sector was seeking ways to shift some of the high export volumes away from the EU and U.K, which currently receive between 70-80% of shipments.

"We are very dependent on them, and therefore very exposed because if something goes wrong in those markets we could lose the total industry," Bestiber said.

"That's one reason why we would need to diversify our markets. We would like to balance it a bit - 50% there, 50% in the Far East, but it will take time."

In the 2013-14 season South Africa was the sixth-largest table grape producer in the world, and is expected to grow shipments by 4-7% this season thanks largely to the absence of last year's freezing weather.

Although the 7% of exports currently sent to China and Hong Kong is in no way an insignificant amount, the volumes are still dwarfed by EU-bound shipments.

Bestbier explained how countries in the Far East represented very exciting opportunities for table grape exporters due to the number of people consuming fruits and the rate of economic growth.

"For those basic reasons we regard the Far East, in particular China, as the top priority. We are also quite excited about Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand," he said.

South Africa does face challenges selling table grapes in these markets, however, because of the long transit times and the obligatory cold treatments.

"The shipping time is very long - three weeks by sea, depending on the conditions. Adding to that of course are the regulations regarding food safety and pest and diseases," Bestiber said.

"Unfortunately in South Africa we do have agricultural pests like fruit fly. Therefore we have regulations in place to cold treat the products - 21 days at -0.5°C [31°F].

"It's very cold, so number one it's very expensive, and number two sometimes it damages the fruit. So we are not 100% happy when our fruit arrives at the destination markets without being at its best. So we have to negotiate with the governments, on our side and the Chinese side and do some research."

Global seedless trend

Bestbier was optimistic that South Africa could perform extremely well in Far East markets if solutions to problems were found, given those destinations were showing a general trend toward red and black varieties, which South Africans were very good at producing.

He also said although Red Globe was an important variety in South Africa, volumes had been gradually decreasing as more and more people replanted their land with seedless varieties.

"We believe that the whole world is moving to seedless massively, so we think that one day Chile and Peru might face some difficulties as they have a lot of Red Globe production. In China it hasn't really happened yet, but we think it would follow," he said.

"There are some exporters in South Africa who still have seeded varieties - Red Globe and Barlinka are good examples. They get good prices and their customers are very loyal.

"So there have always been exceptions but the general trend is seedless and the industry is well prepared for that."

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