New paperless system set to save fruit industry millions

The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), has entered into an agreement with Fruit South Africa (FSA) to develop a paperless e-certification platform that will be able to exchange electronic certificates with other countries.

“The new e-certification platform will deliver official export documentation to trading partners in electronic format and replace all paper equivalents, saving the industry at least R250 million over the next five years,” explained Ernest Phoku, the director of DAFF’s directorate for inspection services.

According to Phoko, this extensive saving could be attributed to improved efficiency, the minimising of errors (human and systemic), as well as reduced processing times.

The development of the e-certification platform follows on the citrus industry’s IT platform, PhytClean, developed in 2013 by Paul Hardman of the Citrus Growers’ Association.

According to Hardman, PhytClean was developed to improve efficiencies, reduce errors, and cut down-time and the costs involved in the issuing of certificates to South African citrus growers.

Due to its efficiency PhytClean had been adopted by other fruit sectors since 2016 and had become a Fruit South Africa initiative.

The success of the PhytClean system was evident when the EU compliance requirements for false coddling moth (FCM) came into force in January.

“The citrus industry’s requirements were entirely managed on PhytClean during 2018.

“It has proven to be very effective in improving supplychain efficiencies and being able to show that we are compliant at each step,” said Hardman.

The e-certification platform is expected to be rolled out to the fruit industry in 2019 and could be introduced in other sectors in the future. – Jeandré van der Walt

Adobe stock ABOVE: A new paperless e-certification system is expected to greatly improve efficiencies in the South African fruit industry.