Several shipments of apple juice have been withdrawn in recent weeks due to safety concerns. (Archive photo: Unsplash)
There is great concern about the bottleneck experienced by juice factories in the Eastern and Western Cape due to an oversupply of pome fruits such as apples and pears. Juice factories have started to introduce quotas that limit the intake of fruit. As a result, hordes of fruit end up on the ash heap and farmers suffer an enormous loss of income.
This is because the cost of storing fruit in cold rooms for later export is increasing, among other things because generators have to be used constantly to keep refrigerators running. Increases in diesel costs and the minimum wage are also causing farmers to look elsewhere for cheaper options to have their fruit processed, which includes juice factories.
Juice factories told Rhewal that they sometimes receive 200% more fruit in a week than ever before.
“Farmers are inundated with challenges and faced with almost impossible decisions. One cannot sugar coat the reality. The factors working against producers leave a big question mark over the profitability of apple and pear producers this season,” says Marius van der Westhuizen, a Hortgro representative in the Langkloof.
Herman Potgieter, chief executive officer of Granor Passi, which has a processing plant in the Langkloof, confirmed that the factories in the Eastern and Western Cape have experienced an increase in fruit since last year and this is putting tremendous pressure on factories.
“The juice factories only have a certain processing capacity which is currently more than 100% utilised. Up to 25% of the capacity is lost, mainly due to load shedding. We do everything in our power to support the industry as much as we can,” says Potgieter.
“The fruit that is not exported will be delivered to the juice factory first, if there is capacity available, otherwise it will have to be thrown away.”
He says poor service delivery at the ports and the extremely high shipping costs also play a role in farmers’ decision to send the fruit to juice factories instead.
Although farmers lose fruit – and money – in the process, factories do not foresee that prices for the juice fruit will decrease drastically, as global demand for apple concentrate is still high, says Potgieter.
Hail damage
(Photo: Antoinette Ferreira Zietsman/Facebook)
The oversupply of juice factories especially now has a direct impact on farmers in the Langkloof, who have been hit hard in the past month.
An estimated 1,500 hectares of fruit, which was not under netting, was affected. About 75,000 bulk crates and 1.2 million export cartons full of fruit were also affected. The damage amounts to around R130 million.
“In the past, you simply delivered your hail-damaged fruit to juice factories and then at least you didn’t lose all the income, but at the moment juice factories are too full,” says Van der Westhuizen.
Potgieter says that factories will accept some fruit that has not suffered too much hail damage, provided that it is delivered to the factory within a short period of time after the damage.
“Farmers are now faced with a difficult decision: If the fruit that is not irrevocably damaged by hail cannot be delivered to a juice factory as before, then it is worth putting that fruit together with class 1 fruit in a cold room to store until later this year when the juice factory might accept it? You are effectively ‘stealing’ space in the room that you would otherwise have used for export product, just to try to avoid a total loss – but with no guarantee of success.”
Van der Westhuizen says it does not look like the situation at the juice factories will normalize in the next two or three months.
Sending fruit to municipal markets is not an option for farmers either, says Van der Westhuizen, as some markets struggle with cooling amid load shedding and municipalities’ inability to supply markets with diesel.
