PRESS RELEASE

The Institute of Risk Management South Africa awarded the first prize to Novo Fruit Packers in the Agriculture sector for their alternative water supply project.  Novo competed against 10 nominations in its category before walking away with the accolade at the awards ceremony hosted on 9 November 2018 at the Annual Gala Dinner in Johannesburg.

Novo, owned by Capespan, is a state-of-the-art pome fruit packing facility situated in Paarl, Western Cape, strategically located to service pome fruit farmers in the Ceres, Villiersdorp, Piketberg and Grabouw areas. 

Novo was one of the largest users of municipal water in the Drakenstein Municipal area, located in Paarl, the Western Cape.  Their annual usage exceeded 50 million litres.

In 2017 Novo commissioned a borehole and water sanitation plant to substitute its usage of municipal water amidst the worst drought ever experienced in the Western Cape.  The entire region was under pressure with extreme water restrictions and a looming “day zero” threat of completely running out of water supply.

Due to the fact that water is an integral part of Novo’s service offering, the water needed to be of potable standard.  In the period between April and October 2017 the treated borehole water was used in combination with municipal supply.  In November 2017 the municipal water supply was closed and Novo’s operations were 100% “off-grid”.  This allowed Novo sustainability in its service delivery, even in the event  “day zero” materialize, whilst also relieving supply pressure on the local municipality.

The packhouse has BRC accreditation, and is fitted with the IQS4 (internal quality system) technology from Greefa, Netherlands.  The facility run 120 000 bins at full capacity and its CA cold rooms have a current bin capacity of 50 000 bins. The ability to simultaneously pack different grades enables Novo to optimise the full bin of fruit as well as service the different needs of diverse market segments.

Capespan owns and farms a number of citrus, top fruit and grapes production units and Novo packhouse forms an integral part of Capespan’s fruit basket offer.