You can’t be internationally competitive when your primary export gateway is the worst container port in the world, says Piet de Jager, CEO of the Fresh Produce Exporters’ Forum.
The Port of Cape Town was ranked 400th out of 400 global container ports in the 2025 World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence Container Port Performance Index.
Almost 90% of fruit grown in South Africa is exported through Cape Town to Europe and the UK. Timing, efficiency and predictability are everything. The country’s fruit growers are at the mercy of a port system that doesn’t work optimally.
Delays over the Christmas export season meant that many farmers couldn’t get their fruit to lucrative overseas markets on time and may now have lost them. When the fruit does arrive, it comes with newer fruit, creating an oversupply. And the old fruit is now “damaged”, for which claims are payable — up to 40% of claims are due to delays, says De Jager.
“The risk is that we are now regarded as an unreliable supplier in our traditional markets,” says De Jager. “Half of our fruit goes to markets that pay premium pricing.”
They’re opening up new, less lucrative markets in the Middle East and Asia, as markets in Europe and the UK become more difficult to service because of delays and high compliance costs. “The bottleneck remains our port system. Larger retailers in Europe are saying we’re not reliable anymore.”
Missing the prized pre-Christmas slots left European retailers without the quality fruit they’d expected to sell. Now they’ve told their South African suppliers they won’t order fruit from them if they use Cape Town.
“Retailers in our traditional markets are starting to buy more from our competitors in Peru and Chile. Our quality is better, but they’re regarded as more reliable,” says De Jager. “Once you lose your slot in these markets, you’re out.”
Farmers of stone fruit (plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, cherries) and table grapes lost a combined R4.2bn, or 20%, of possible export value due to port delays in the critical November 2025 to February 2026 deciduous export period.
“Several producers can’t recover their costs from the last season, which puts them at risk for the new season. Farms are being put up for sale already.”
The knock-on effect is disastrous. Fruit farmers are the biggest employers in the agriculture sector, providing 320,000 jobs. Thousands of rural livelihoods are on the line because of problems at Cape Town.
Not only are current jobs affected, job creation in the future is too, says De Jager. “The conundrum is we’re opening up markets, the production is there, but we are physically limited in how we can deliver our products.”
The City of Cape Town recently called on Transnet, not for the first time, to speed up private sector involvement in the Cape Town container terminal to improve its performance. Why it isn’t doing this “is a question we’re asking, and no-one can answer”, says De Jager.
The strong wind prevalent at the harbour is Transnet’s perennial excuse. De Jager makes the point that ports around the world must also deal with high winds and somehow manage to do so a lot better than Cape Town. He blames poor port management and a lack of urgency about getting things right.
“It seems like there’s a lack of planning and recovery processes and the like. The wind was really bad, but then you’d expect the systems to kick in and keep things working properly.”
What about those who say the worst-in-the-world ranking ignores recent improvements? “If you modelled a worst-case scenario, it wouldn’t come close to what we experienced last season,” De Jager responds.
Transnet invested in new cranes at R90m each, which it said would work in winds of up to 90km/h. When container moves per hour on and off ships didn’t improve, De Jager discovered the cranes weren’t being used at full design capacity.
Crane operators also couldn’t get in and out of the cabs because Transnet hadn’t bought the necessary safety harnesses. He was told the procurement system couldn’t get them quickly enough because it was the festive season. “So my logistics manager drove to a PPE [personal protective equipment] supplier, bought the harnesses and delivered them to the port for them to use.”
Part of the problem, De Jager believes, is a misunderstanding of the fresh produce industry’s specific concerns. “If a container of wine or frozen fish misses its slot and it’s a week late, it’s not a train smash. For fruit it’s a disaster because your shelf life is so limited.”
De Jager’s frustration is that Transnet is not using the private sector as much as it could. If the private sector was allowed to run the container terminal, it could bring it up to world standard in around two years, he says.
“A big component of the government’s reform programme is participation. We’re not asking them to privatise the port; we’re just saying get the private sector in to help where it can make a difference. It’s government policy. If they’re doing it at the container terminal in Durban, why not here?”