Industry veterans Dr Paul Clüver and Anton Rabe look back at his lasting impact on South African fruit exports
South African fresh produce export industry leaders have paid tribute to the passing of former Fruitways chairman and industry legend Alastair Moodie.
Former Capespan chairman Dr Paul Clüver said Moodie’s contribution to and involvement with the South African industry will be sorely missed.
“Alastair has always been there – and now he is not. It is difficult to grasp,” he said.
“My connection with the Moodie family goes back as long as I can remember, but it was only years later, when we found ourselves working together on several fruit-industry bodies, that our real relationship began.”
The decade between 1990 and 2000 brought extraordinary change, Clüver noted, not only politically in South Africa but within the fruit industry itself.
”It was a period of intense debate, passionate convictions, and complex challenges as deregulation approached,” he continued.
”In those years, Alastair and I often met at Peregrine Restaurant or at our respective offices for long conversations about the future of the industry.
“Unlike many discussions happening around us at the time, ours were always enjoyable,” Clüver reminisced.
”They were intentional without being rigid, critical without being confrontational, and analytical without ever losing humour.
”Alastair had a rare ability to make serious conversations feel constructive – even uplifting,” he outlined.
Following deregulation, Moodie moved on to build a ”remarkable” fruit company and later expanded into other ventures, Clüver pointed out.
“Though our professional paths diverged, we still found time to meet for coffee whenever we could.”
In recent years their paths crossed again in a way that mattered deeply: working to make Elgin a better place.
“We supported education, health initiatives, small business development, and feeding schemes during Covid,” he said.
”I quickly discovered that community work can be far more complicated than it appears – but with Alastair, the complexity was always made easier.
”And so, inevitably, there were many more coffees as we tried to make sense of it all.”
Clűver noted that Moodie’s knowledge, intellect, passion, and humour leave a profound empty space.
“But they also leave a powerful legacy – one that shaped our industry, our community, and many of us personally,” he concluded.
Anton Rabe, executive director of Hortgro, said Moodie was a peace loving and calm person but, underneath this, his views sometimes generate heated debates.
“I worked closely with him on the so-called Self Source Inspection under which specific guarantees in terms of quality was given under various brands and by packhouses to receivers in the local market,” explained Rabe.
”This is today common practice in South African apple and pear trade.”
He also highlighted how Moodie always promoted industry interests.
“When, after deregulation, voluntary industry funding of industry functions were threatened, he continued paying those levies,” Rabe confirmed.
Moodie was a leader in promoting integrated agri-businesses, he added.
“Fruitways is a good example and today plays a vital role in the industry.”
