Improving cooperation to make the South African fresh apple export value chain more competitive

Abstract

This paper investigates aspects of cooperation between South African (SA) apple producers, packers and exporters in the Western Cape and Langkloof East areas during 2001 in order to show where these players need to commit more resources to make the SA fresh apple export value chain more competitive. A recursive Ordinary Least Squares model shows that higher levels of trust led to more cooperation (joint problem-solving and communication) between these players. Higher levels of joint problem-solving and communication, in turn, encouraged producers to commit more human resources to working with packers and exporters to find ways of making the chain more competitive. Results also suggest that the players need to particularly improve cooperation in production planning, delivery scheduling and quality control. Packers and exporters ranked climatic conditions as the top constraint currently facing the SA fresh apple industry, probably reflecting their concerns over the annual "pack-out" (quality distribution) of the apple crop. Other factors affecting competitiveness include the recent withdrawal of government export incentives, restrictive labour policy, high real interest rates, a lack of market information, and the growing and marketing of inappropriate apple varieties.