"Our previous facility served Tru-Cape and our grower owners from Ceres Fruit Growers and Two-a-Day for 30 years and this new building will help us achieve our goals for the next decade and more," says MD Roelf Pienaar.
In addition to investing in infrastructure, Tru-Cape has reduced operating costs through joint-venture partnerships with key customers, further closing the gap between the grower and the consumer. "Our focus has always been on establishing a good, strong local market brand and this continues with renewed energy."
Based on trees already in the ground, the company will have 18 million cartons of fruit to place within the next five years. "We will now have capacity for 1152 palettes of fruit as well as administration and meetings spaces. This will allow us to better and more frequently replenish our local customers but also to plan to expand further our cross-border business into Africa, already 36% more year-on-year. The building will have three loading bays; five cold-storage rooms to each accommodate 240 palettes as well as a holding and inspection facility. This will allow for quality and phytosanitary inspection in our own facility and for cold- sterilisation where necessary."
The company's closer-to-market strategy sees it working more directly with key customers, focusing specifically on Africa and the Middle East. "This will ultimately lead to greater management of the value chain and increased returns to our grower shareholders."
At the helm since January 2014, Pienaar says that 2014 was a year of focussing on people, processes and technology. "We have increased our operational efficiencies so that we are extracting the maximum value and this will maintain our leadership position and continue to make us relevant for this decade and next.
"In addition to two meeting rooms we will have the Hannes Rossouw Boardroom which is dedicated to the memory of one of Ceres Fruit Growers' engineers who worked closely with the Johannesburg building and passed away suddenly recently.
"There will be three plug-in points for refrigerated containers to maintain the cold-chain but the biggest benefit of our new facility is the ability to replenish local retailers, which were previously subjected to a 48-hour delay, while fruit was freighted from Cape Town. The result for the consumer will be a better quality product that has had less storage time in retailers' fridges."
It is also eyeing new customers and plans to grow its 60% share of informal market business. "We are also growing our basket by adding other fruit and veg lines adding greater value to our growers by managing more of their total crop and not only apples, pears and cherries.
"Increased cross-border business with our neighbours in Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania, Botswana and others is the most significant growth trend with road freight leaving from Johannesburg into sub-Saharan Africa ever more frequently. We have created spaces in our new building especially dedicated to offering these customers a working and rest space, including shower facilities while purchases are being loaded.
"As apples and pears are not grown to the North of our borders, City Deep, Johannesburg is a convenient collection point for our fruit as customers also shop at the nearby municipal markets for other produce," he concludes.
For more information, go to www.Tru-Cape.co.za.
