The newly built Maputo Port Fruit Terminal in Mozambique is said to come as a huge boost to the Southern African citrus industry. The port will be a gateway to Africa’s fruit market and the world, and is expected to play a very important role in fruit exports.
Maputo Port Fruit Terminal (MPFT) is a newly created Mozambican company. It entered into an agreement with Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC) to operate a fruit terminal in the Port of Maputo.
While DP World has the exclusive right to handle containers in the port, MPFT has the right to handle all fruit and nuts not in containers. The port warehouse is currently used as a fruit terminal rented from MPDC and is an ambient (uncooled) facility of more than 2400 square meters.
Dawie Scholtz, general manager of MPFT, says the purpose of the company is to supply the typical complete warehousing function to parties wanting to use Maputo as an export port.
“But initially [for most of 2021] it was to get all the puzzle pieces together for the Maputo Corridor to start operating with fruit again after it was paused due to some production and technical delays. Although many people had big plans over a number of years, MPFT decided to implement, rather than just talk about its structures, facilities and arrangements, and do the necessary capital investments,” Scholtz explains.
Scholtz tells Food For Mzansi a little more about the port.
Zolani Sinxo: What does this port mean for the South African fruit industry, especially the citrus sector?
Dawie Scholtz: We know SA has only three main fruit export ports, with Durban the main port for production in the northern regions of South Africa, as well as production of Eswatini and Zimbabwe. The estimate for this year is 90 million boxes – to be exported almost exclusively through Durban. The challenges during the peak of the season are well-known, and to a big portion of that northern region, Maputo is way closer.
The Port of Maputo is also highly rated for performance, and it has proven the last couple of weeks that the turn-around time of citrus trucks, time to get into stacks, and the number of days before vessel is leaving, is outperforming Durban by far. So for the citrus producer, especially the ones relatively close to Maputo, this is an alternative port available with competitive lower-cost chains, quicker turnarounds, faster to the market, etc. All of these are critical for optimising producer income, something extremely important in the current citrus season.
How do you think this will improve South African exports to the rest of Africa and the continent as a whole?
Although the bigger percentages of citrus are exported to the major markets of the world, Maputo is the ideal port to use for supplying the Eastern African countries. There are a number of shipping lines that call at different East African ports.
Are there any challenges that currently hinder the maximum use of this port or may harm its future?
The biggest challenge is the fact that there are currently no cooling facilities. Although we focus on getting the fruit as quickly as possible into the container, and the container plugged in at DP World asap, we are limited by industry protocols to only certain fruit commodities or specifications allowed to load at ambient [temperatures], and only certain markets accepting ambient loaded fruit.
The activities in the port are to a great extent linked to the markets we serve. This is determined by which shipping lines implement which services from Maputo. For example, if we had cold room facilities we could have handled European fruit as well, and that would have unlocked a big chunk of fruit that is now not available to us.
How do you see the port developing within the next five years?
Maputo will grow in steps – every time a new shipping line is calling at Maputo and new markets are served from Maputo, more producers will use Maputo as a port. To qualify as a real export port, the most important markets need to be served, which also brings another component critical to the fruit industry – flexibility.
The moment you have different shipping opportunities to different markets, you have the flexibility to still optimise income even when you have a rejection or have to divert fruit from one market to another.
Maputo will have cold storage facilities by 2023, and will very soon serve most markets, and very soon become a small Durban in terms of flexibility and options. Summer fruit like table grapes, mangoes, litchis, and maybe even avocados will be handled, Mozambique bananas will be exported, macadamias, etc.
But there are two important points to mention – because there is a border crossing to do, the Maputo process will always be a more controlled process than Durban, where volumes will be managed at practical levels.
Maputo must never be seen as an alternative to Durban – that is impossible because of the volumes going through Durban. It must rather be seen as an additional port, to help to deviate some (small portion) of the Durban volumes.
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