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Citrus industry expected to break the export record

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The South African agricultural sector is anticipating a record year for exports. The citrus industry is expected to break the export record it achieved last year, in spite of logistical challenges.

South Africa is the world’s second-largest exporter of citrus after Spain.

Last year, the citrus industry exported a record 146 million cartons of citrus. This year, they expected to export 163 million cartons.

But due to the small size of citrus harvested this year, the figure has been revised down.

Citrus Growers’ Association CEO, Justin Chadwick says this is still expected to break last year’s export figures.

“As we started harvesting our grapefruit and valencia we realised the size was a little bit smaller and if you drop the size obviously you drop the number of cartons. So we have re-assessed that and we came at about 158 million cartons, so slightly down to our earlier anticipation. We also had these widely known riots, the impact of that. Following that, we had a cyber-attack at Transnet. Both of those will impact the tail end of our season,” says Chadwick.

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