Identifying seasonal export opportunities for selected South African fruit and nut crops

Abstract

The fruit and nut sector is an important export industry for South Africa. In 2017, the sector was South Africa’s seventh largest exporting sector, which contributed to 3.8% of the country’s total exports and had a 4% year-on-year growth rate for the period of 2013 to 2017. South Africa was the tenth largest exporter of fruit and nuts in the world in 2017 and the country contributed to 2.8% of world exports. Counter-seasonal trade of fruit and nut crops has become more significant, due to consumers’ demand for year-round fresh produce and to supplement their domestic production in the off-season. South Africa’s main export destinations for fruit and nuts in 2017 were the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia, all of which are located in the Northern Hemisphere. Given the seasonality of certain fruit and nut crops, it is possible that there are unexplored export opportunities for South Africa, during the months when competitors in the Northern Hemisphere are out-of-season. When using annual trade data in international market selection methods, these seasonal export opportunities for specific fruit and nut crops might be overlooked. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to identify underutilised seasonal export opportunities for selected South African fruit and nut crops by applying monthly data to a market selection framework. The market selection framework applied to achieve this objective consisted of three phases, based on selected filters of the Decision Support Model which was first developed by Cuyvers, De Pelsmacker, Rayp and Roozen in 1995. Phase 1 identified potential import markets based on monthly import size and growth (Phase 1.1), as well as market concentration (Phase 1.2). In addition, South Africa’s monthly supply was analysed in Phase 2, to determine in which months the country was a sustainable exporter of the selected fruit and nut crops. In Phase 3, the import demand and export supply was matched. Monthly potential export values were calculated for the selected product-country combinations and evaluated against actual South African exports (Phase 3.1). Finally, the market access in each potential product-country combination was identified (Phase 3.2). In this study, a total of 228 potential seasonal export opportunities (product-country combinations) were identified. Amongst these seasonal export opportunities, 64 are in new and 164 in existing markets. The majority of potential seasonal export opportunities were identified in Europe, specifically, Eastern and Southern European markets. The countries with the highest total underutilised seasonal export opportunities for all the products included in this study were Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Latvia, Serbia, Estonia and the United States of America. The three crops with the largest total underutilised seasonal potential are apples, grapes and lemons. This study, therefore, provides insight into possibly overlooked seasonal export opportunities in markets where the main competitors are out-of-season. It also gives guidance to South African policymakers and agri-businesses on new opportunities for market expansion and priority markets for enhancing market access.