“Open doors welcoming South African produce”
European sales success is on the cards for SAFE this season, according to SAFE marketing and sales manager, Wibo van den Ende, who returned to Cape Town earlier this month after an extended trip to offer European clients the best of South African table grapes and citrus.
” I was fortunate to be met by open doors welcoming South African produce”, said van den Ende. “Apart from quality and consistency of product, the buyers are very focused on certification such as Fairtrade – about which I was more than happy to reassure them as far as select SAFE farms are concerned.
van den Ende said he had been able to reassure buyers of the strides taken by SAFE to achieve optimum compliance with the full range of certification required to achieve sales success in global markets.
“I am confident that we have established SAFE as an ethical producer in the eyes of major buyers and as a supplier that consistently delivers high quality produce – a supplier that they can rely on.”
And this week SAFE received yet another a healthy certification boost when its Northern Cape table grape farm Nuweland was granted permission to trade with other Fairtrade certified partners.
This followed a two-day audit by FLOCERT, the global certification and verification body set up to independently assess farms for Fairtrade certification. The certification will be extended once a few minor issues have been addresses at the farm.
South African Fruit Exporters (SAFE) own and manage citrus and table grape farms and fruit packing sheds in South Africa.
For more then two decades they have supplied markets in the European Union, the UK, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle and Far East.
Not only does SAFE plant, harvest and pack, gapes and citrus, they are also able to pack directly into client-centric packaging, branding and labeling van ende added.