South African exporters get a sneak peek into Maersk’s upcoming coldstore facility in Cape Town
AP Moller-Maersk has offered an early look at its Belcon Logistics Park in Cape Town.
The logistics group invited its existing and potential customers in South Africa to visit the upcoming state-of-the-art coldstore facility.
The Belcon Logistics Park will be part of a three-coldstorage facility network that Maersk will operate in the country before the end of 2025.
Maersk said the facility will be formally inaugurated in the last quarter of the year, but it will start welcoming cargo for some of its customers as early as June.
”The logistics of perishables such as grapes, citrus, oranges, etc, are highly critical,” outlined Lubabalo Mtya, managing director of Maersk South Africa.
”If we only investigate the exports out of Cape Town, delays and a broken cold chain in logistics have cost the South African grape industry up to R1.5bn in a year, as estimated by the South African Table Grape Industry.
”Our ambition is to minimise these losses for South Africa’s exporters as much as possible by offering integrated and unbroken cold chain logistics through our upcoming cold stores in the country,” Mtya added.
Maersk invited some of South Africa’s exporters to have a glimpse of the facility and to experience what they might expect from its integrated logistics solutions, which include consolidation, storage, customs brokerage, terminal handling, and both ocean and landside transportation at origin and destination.
Alongside the Belcon Logistics Park, Maersk will open another new Cato coldstore facility in Cato Ridge near Durban later this year.
The company confirmed that its new coldstore facilities will align with its global ambition to achieve Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 by utilising renewable energy.
