Cape Town harbour played host to a somewhat unusual visitor this past weekend (28-29 November), when - in an era where fruit shipments from South Africa are dominated by containers - a conventional reefer vessel was loading an early season consignment of table grapes destined for the UK and European markets.
The Cool Carriers vessel, Crown Sapphire, has been chartered by leading exporters the Karsten Group, Grape Alliance and Green Marketing, who say that using the reefer vessels to augment supplies in the early season gives them greater shipping options.
The grape export season from Cape Town is now in full swing. The port is the main shipping location for grapes from Namibia and South Africa, with most of the early season grapes grown and packed well outside the city.
From Southern Namibia and the Orange River it is about 850km to Cape Town and convoys of trucks ply the busy N-7 route along the west coast leading from Namibia and the Northern Cape to Cape Town during the early season.
In the case of grapes from South Africa’s northern regions, with the main production centered around Groblersdal in Mpumalanga, it is an even longer road trip of close to 2,000km before the grapes can be loaded in Cape Town.
Grape Alliance's Leon de Kock says that between three and four conventional reefers will be scheduled for the early part of the season: “It does offer us additional shipping opportunities and different shipping mode which is good for the business.”
Cobus van der Merwe of Horizon Fruits, the Karsten Group’s logistics division, says the first conventional vessel of the season will arrive in UK ports around 16 December and will be an important boost for supplies in the pre-Christmas sales weeks: “We are planning further vessels on a two-weekly basis and this helps to boost our shipping opportunities and ensure continuous arrivals.”
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