South Africa is gearing up for the second three-year stint of its Post-harvest Innovation Programme, set to get renewed funding next month.
The public private partnership was set up between the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum of South Africa (FEPF), the Department of Science and Technology and the Agricultural Research Council to focus on the fresh produce value chain.
The project, which set out with 15 million rand from the government and up to 2m rand from the industry, has focused on a number of issues including the reduction of carbon footprint across the supply chain, storage and ripening, packaging and efficiency.
Stuart Symington, chief executive of the FPEF, told freshinfo: “We have thrown the rule book out of the window because we know that you have to innovate or evaporate.”
Dr Malcolm Dodd, who heads up the programme, said: “We will almost certainly get funding for a further three years on March 31 and we will then be putting out a call to the industry for further projects.
“This time around, we may well go for higher-level projects, such as thinking about what a packhouse of the future may look like and choosing more over-arching projects that will not be specific to one category.
“We are looking for partners and recently, we have been talking with DEFRA in the UK because there are some projects that they are considering partnering us on.”
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