The blueberry industry in South Africa seeks to compete with Latin American producers
South Africa is one of the countries that has recently shown its great potential in the cranberry industry, a fruit that looks increasingly attractive to the consumer, and whose demand makes its producers face more challenges when exporting it.
But it has not been easy for the country of South Africa to overcome all the challenges that the blue berrie production has entailed, especially since its current legislation on agriculture has not been entirely solid to give more space to the plantation of this culture.
That is why the South African Association of Berries Producers (SABPA, for its acronym in English) was created seven years ago, an organization that was created by the need to represent emerging players in the field, and also to lobby on issues such as the handling of chemical products in the production of blueberries.
That is where one of the main problems of South Africans comes from, warns the directors of the SABPA. They point out that they do not have easy access to phytosanitary products that allow controlling the pests that commonly affect blueberry plantations.
"The registration of chemical products turns out to be very expensive, and although the sector was small, large companies did not invest large sums of money to register chemical products, and it was one of our greatest frustrations from the beginning," says Jeán Kotzé, the appointed president of SABPA.
The representative of the South African organization adds that they spent years in which they saw with frustration how the production withered, and that they felt tied hands because they did not have the necessary resources to optimize the blueberry plantations in their respective surfaces.
Kotzé says that the blueberry market has had a good reputation in South Africa because of its high labor requirements. This means that, for each hectare, three to four workers are needed for the crops to be of higher quality.
It projects that the production of blue berries will exceed 10.000 tons in the African country at the close of 2018, and estimates that the nation will become a potential competitor of nations such as Chile and Argentina in the next 10 years.
For the president of the South African Association of Producers of Berries, the closed crops have given a good image to the blueberry industry in that country. "The South African blueberry sector was based on closed crops and close associations between breeders, producers and marketers," explains Jeán Kotzé.
He adds that there is a movement that intends to introduce more crops that are not linked to a specific marketing agent, which some see as an interesting development for the South African sector and that could project it into the main importing markets of the world. "
For Kotzé, in a decade there will be many more open crops on South African soil, a situation that in his opinion will allow the quality of the berries from that country to improve. “I think there will also be changes in the marketing environment. This can be seen as part of the maturation of the sector and I think it is necessary to facilitate the entry of new participants in it”.
The potential of lyophilization
From SABPA they analyze the enormous potential in blueberry processing methods such as lyophilization. “Our industry is still very small, but I think that as more are processed berries At an international level, and the supply still does not meet the growing demand, fresh and processed products will be more balanced, and I believe that there will come a stage in which it could be difficult to move volumes of highly perishable products quickly”, answers Jeán Kotzé .
With freeze-drying, blueberries retain all their nutrients, explains Kotzé. "If you add freeze-dried blueberries, either powdered, whole or sliced, you add the full nutritional value of a blueberry to a product," insists the SABPA executive.
Highlights that could be added to a hamburger or even pet food "The health studies that are being conducted on the beneficial effect of cranberries in memory, for example, are not made with fresh blueberries, but with lyophilized blueberries", stress.
In the local market, blueberry sales are growing double digits every year and the market is far from saturated. Jean Kotzé believes that there are still many long-term opportunities for lower prices, but local blueberry prices will begin to fall, despite the increase in production, and at an international level, prices are gradually stabilizing and falling.
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