The PPECB will, therefore, continue to focus on the following strategic focus areas:

• Further improve the client experience through seamless integration with PPECB systems (external);
• The provision of relevant and timeous export and shipping information and market trends to enhance the competitiveness of the industry (BI);
• Continuous improvement through a process of transformation, innovation, and digitalisation;
• Improved business efficiencies to ensure effective service delivery and contain cost; and
• Improved business sustainability for black smallholder farmers and suppliers.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) has issued the results of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for Quarter 3 (Q3): 2023. The working-age population increased by 140 000 or 0,3% in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the second quarter of 2023. Compared to Q3: 2022, the working-age population increased by 564 000 or 1,4%. The number of employed persons increased by 399 000 to 16.7 million in Q3: 2023, while the number of unemployed persons decreased by 72 000 to 7.8 million compared to Quarter 2 (Q2): 2023, resulting in an increase of 326 000 (up by 1,3%) in the number of people in the labour force. The number of discouraged work-seekers decreased by 26 000 (down by 0,8%) and the number of people who were not economically active for reasons other than discouragement also decreased by 160 000 (down by 1,2%) between the two quarters, resulting in a net decrease of 186 000 in the not economically active population.

The number of persons moved from the “not economically active” and “unemployed” statuses to the “employed” category between the two quarters, which resulted in a decrease of 0,7 of a percentage point in the unemployment rate to 31,9%. The labour force participation rate in Q3: 2023 was higher than that reported in Q2: 2023 as a result of these movements – increasing by 0,6 of a percentage point to 60,2%. The absorption rate increased by 0,9 of a percentage point to 41,0% in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the second quarter of 2023.

During the 2022 State of the Nation Address (SoNA), President Ramaphosa indicated that for the 2023 SoNA, the focus is not on new plans or the full programme of Government; rather, the SoNA is concentrating on those issues that concern South Africans the most such as load shedding, unemployment, poverty, crime and corruption. In that regard, the 2024/2025 Annual Performance Plan (APP) should focus on actions that will make meaningful progress now. It is expected that the department should fasttrack the implementation of its commitments in alignment with the relevant twelve SoNA Priorities.

The reporting period was not good for volumes shipped on cold treatment specialised refrigerated vessels. The USA market had seen a reduction in volumes shipped on this mode of transportation due to the floods earlier in the year, which impacted packing schedules. The USA market had seen a decline of seven vessels compared to last year. However, there has been a significant increase in pallets shipped to Russia in terms of the mode of transportation. Year to date, there is a 29% shortfall in budgeted volumes on this mode of transportation. The shipping lines indicated that they intend to use SRVs for the coming table grape season. This will assist in increasing the number of pallets shipped using this mode of transport.

In the Red Sea (entrance to the Suez Canal), the Houthi group’s assaults on commercial vessels have sent shockwaves through the global supply chain and international trade. They have forced the world’s largest shipping companies to change the routes of their ships. Exacerbating the crisis is the fact that the Panama Canal is also currently experiencing a disruption. Due to the drought, ship traffic in the canal has slowed significantly.

The El Niño climate pattern has led to the lowest October precipitation on record in Panama, resulting in a drought that has depleted water levels in the canal. In response, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) limited the number of vessels passing through the waterway. The daily limit was lowered to 22 ships in December, down from the normal 36 vessels.

The ongoing logistical challenges with the South African ports remain of huge concern. The resignation of the Transnet CEO and other senior executives resulted in much uncertainty within Transnet. Transnet is behind on its time frames for committed projects, especially those relating to repairs and obtaining new equipment. The port infrastructure challenges, coupled with weather delays, will result in major challenges within the port of Cape Town for the coming table grape season. A worrying factor is the R5.7 billion loss that Transnet had announced, as this will have an impact on the infrastructure and productivity within the port.

Year to date 164 604 containers were shipped nationally with perishable products. The container volumes are in line with the PPECB budget. However, the lower volumes of citrus fruit produced within some of the production regions did have a negative impact on container volumes. The floods and rain within the Western Cape negatively impacted some production regions, and export volumes were lost. The challenges experienced within South African ports had created an opportunity for exports to be shipped from Walvis Bay. Many exporters had opted to load/ stuff containers in the Northern Cape and truck the containers to Walvis Bay to be shipped.

With South Africa exporting roughly 60% of all fruit produced, the sector’s potential for job creation is not limited to primary production but even further down the value chain. This can be in the form of packing and cooling, marketing, various modes of transport, clearing and forwarding service providers or related professional services, among other things.

Access to international markets is paramount for sustainable growth and investments in the agricultural sector. On average, about 55% of the agriculture value-added is generated from the export markets, indicating the importance of accessing the export markets. It is for this reason that negotiating for new export markets while maintaining good trade relations with the existing market has been the strategy and approach of the DoA in the past four years. In 2022, South Africa’s agricultural products were exported to more than 189 countries across the world. The country is also an importer of agricultural products, sourcing from more than 141 countries. In the past four years, the DoA has opened the Philippines for citrus, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for meat, and China and Japan for avocados, just to name a few.

During September 2023, export volumes were adversely affected by heavy rains and floods in the Western Cape province, resulting in export volumes decreasing. Most packhouses were affected by the floods and could not continue packing. Inspection and cold chain services were affected due to infrastructure damage to roads and bridges, causing logistical issues and limited access to packhouses for a few days. The grape season was predicted to be dry, with very little rain disruption or damage during the harvesting period. During week 48, there was some rain experienced with very little impact or damage to crops. Week 51 saw 15-20mm of rain with no significant impact experienced, as the majority of the more sensitive cultivars had already been packed.

Global perishable produce exports remained extremely competitive, and non-technical trade barriers (NTBs) became an even greater concern. Protectionism is on the rise, with various countries opting to support their local economies rather than importation. Consumer patterns are changing with a strong focus on quality, affordability, and convenience. South Africa, therefore, needs to differentiate itself by ensuring better quality and delivering to the right markets at the right time. Here, quality inspection standards, speed to market (given all the trade barriers), and export information are critical.

Volumes of major fruit products have seen an upswing over the past years, mainly due to new plantings and new varieties being introduced. Citrus fruit exports have stabilised, and the volume of fruit exported year to date is slightly higher than that of the 2022/2023 season. The growth in volume and stricter market access conditions are expected to put significant pressure on the South African export industry, which contributes around R60 billion to the economy. Furthermore, Grain products (mainly soya beans and maize) continue to show good growth. Volumes of emerging products, like blueberries and macadamia nuts, are expected to increase as they become more popular in eastern markets. These increases will call for urgent additional investment to ensure that the export value chain can cope and that South Africa can remain a reputable exporter of perishable produce worldwide.

The need for increased connectivity and mobility has significantly raised the risk of cyber attacks and data breaches over the last few years. It is, therefore, no surprise that both cyber attacks and data breaches have catapulted to among the top five risks globally, with South Africa having the third highest number of attacks. This immediately puts the credibility of systems under the spotlight, as data breaches may have farreaching implications.

It is further believed that the following external factors will shape the business environment over the next three years:

• Client needs;
• Technological advancements;
• A competitive market environment;
• Policy changes;
• An increase in fruit export volumes;
• Information security;
• Change in the world order; and
• Protectionism.

VISION: Enabling our clients to become the preferred suppliers of perishable products worldwide.

MISSION: Empowering our people to execute their mandate to give integrity to their clients’ products.

VALUES: Agility, Accountability, Collaboration, Innovation, Integrity, Professionalism.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES:

• Enhance the credibility of the South African export certificate;
• Strengthen the PPECB’s capacity to provide a professional suite of services to its clients;
• Support the export competitiveness of South African perishable products industries; and
• Contribute to the socio-economic transformation of the agricultural sector.

The PPECB’s strategy is driven and executed by four main programmes:

CORPORATE SERVICES PROGRAMME: This programme operates cross-functionally with the primary aim of delivering professional support services to the whole of the PPECB.

OPERATIONAL SERVICES PROGRAMME: This programme is responsible for delivering integrated inspection and cold chain services for the export market.

FOOD SAFETY SERVICES PROGRAMME: The main objective of this programme is to ensure compliance with the regulations that are applicable to the South African standards on food safety and quality.

TRANSFORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT SERVICES PROGRAMME: This programme is aimed at building capacity through the development of internal and external skills.

In 2019, the PPECB Board approved a business strategy in support of the PPECB’s medium-term objectives. The strategy is directed at moving the organisation from simply being a regulator to an enabler. The strategy further supports the PPECB’s drive towards digitalisation to create further efficiencies.

Clients expect a consistent and more professional service at the bare minimum. Most clients operate globally, making mobile interaction crucial to the success of their businesses. Over the past few years, clients have also become accustomed to individualised service offerings, online interactions, and the availability of information at their fingertips.

As a regulator of perishable produce destined for export, the PPECB has a national footprint, holds critical export information, and is internationally renowned and ideally positioned to provide its clients with additional service offerings to support the competitiveness of their respective businesses and South Africa as a whole. The PPECB will, therefore, remain relevant and successful as an entity over the next three years by:

Embracing technology to ease interaction and establishing ourselves as the industry leader in the provision of intelligent market information. We will further review our operational model to allow for digitalisation and change in methodologies whilst continuing to ensure compliance. We are committed to improving the overall client experience through innovation and continuous improvement.

The PPECB must adapt its products, services and processes to make them more user-friendly and easier to do business with. We will further introduce more products and services over and above our core services that will increase our overall value proposition to Government and the industry. This will be achieved by the continued development of the mobile technology platform to accommodate all operational modules in both product inspection and cold chain. An integrated ERP system, as well as a centralised Human Capital Suite system to replace the current manual processes, will be introduced.

Both the organisation and individuals will need to place emphasis on continuous skills development. Individuals will need to develop a different set of competencies which will enable them to cope with digitalisation. The competencies needed, therefore, will be a mixed bag consisting of behavioural, technical and practical competencies. This means it will not be enough to only have the knowledge. The application also becomes important. In the rapid reskilling era, unlimited, unrestricted access to learning is becoming the game changer. However, to harness the benefits of this unlimited, unrestricted access to learning, we need to develop into self-directed, agile learners with a strong growth mindset.

The organisational culture required promotes lifelong learning. All generations and types of employees will need to be given the opportunity to upskill themselves. This implies that learning will have to be on-demand, bite-sized and in different formats that can suit all types of learning styles. Employees also need the space to unlearn redundant competencies and re-learn what is relevant for the future.

The PPECB thus needs to evolve, but this cannot be achieved by operating and behaving like an island. Collaboration internally and externally is key, and it is important that the evolution of the PPECB is a journey that includes all its ecosystem members – the DoA, suppliers, clients, service providers such as producers, packhouses, cold stores, exporters and clearing and forwarding agents, processes and services – to move beyond silos and co-create new opportunities for adding value and to innovate. We thus need to create the relevant business platforms as enablers.

To create value for our ecosystem members, we need to do the following as a baseline:

• Increase our infrastructure stability and connectivity;
• trengthen our Business Intelligence (BI) capacity and knowledge to provide accurate and complete information on time;
• Properly integrate innovation into the business;
• Speed up procurement;
• Properly understand stakeholder needs – internally as well as externally;
• Deliver TITAN 2.0® and ERP on time;
• Ensure seamless integration between PPECB and client systems where possible (ERP, TITAN 2.0®); and
• Discover new business models to deliver services costeffectively and quickly.

With these enablers in place, more doors will open in future, which will add to the PPECB’s future sustainability.

Some of the key outcomes of the PPECB transformation strategy are:

• To increase the number of women in leadership in the PPECB;
• To provide dignified opportunities for people with disabilities to gain skills, qualifications and work experiences; and
• To create opportunities for youth to gain skills, qualifications and work experience in the industry.

To achieve the outcomes, the PPECB will continue with the following programmes:

• Women in Leadership with six candidates;
• People with Disabilities with six candidates; and
• Graduates in business support areas in addition to the Agri Export Technologist Programme (AETP).

The PPECB will also continue with the flagship AETP, which is offered annually to unemployed and disadvantaged agriculture graduates. The 2022 target of 45 was exceeded, with 52 learners graduating with a National Certificate in Agri Export Technology. Upon completion, all learners received further seasonal employment opportunities with the PPECB.

From 1 April 2023 to 31 December 2023, over 242 million cartons (94%) of all the products were inspected on TITAN 2.0® at 1 072 activity points. For the major products, over 236 million cartons (96%) were inspected on TITAN 2.0®. When the citrus season ended, 98% of inspections had been conducted via TITAN 2.0®. There were also significantly high percentages of avocado (95%) and grapes (99%) being inspected on the digital platform. The re-inspection enhancement change, which went live on 15 June 2023, impacts re-inspection at cold stores and depots and allows all cold stores and depots to submit re-inspection requests for inspections not initially conducted at their facilities. In line with this change, the TITAN 2.0® service request module has been enhanced so as not to require PUC, PHC or food safety certificates when the option for re-inspection is selected. A total of 2,232,089 carton re-inspections were done on the TITAN 2.0® platform for the period.

The TITAN 2.0® Sprint Planning Workshop was conducted on 7 December 2023. The prioritisation of change requests was discussed, and during that process, the Electronic Consignment Note was brought forward as a priority to address the printing and signing of consignment notes at packhouse level. The other important change request that will be a priority is the amendment of product inspection information before and after the billing process. Sprint Planning sessions were also conducted in preparation for the three-week sprints. An overall change freeze was effected from 15 December 2023 to 8 January 2024, which applied to all infrastructure and applications within the production environment, during which period limited work was done.

Several late OIS requirements for the integration to the ERP system resulted in a delay in the prioritised changes that were required by business. Monthly Change Champion sessions are held for both Product Inspection and Cold Chain. Business Optimisation is in the process of confirming the Change Champion capacity and the nomination of additional Champions from the regions. The roles of the Champions will be reviewed and aligned with the PPECB Client Support model currently being implemented.

The following achievements were accomplished for the reporting period of 1 April 2023 to 31 December 2023.

Several late OIS requirements for the integration to the ERP system resulted in a delay in the prioritised changes that were required by business. Monthly Change Champion sessions are held for both Product Inspection and Cold Chain. Business Optimisation is in the process of confirming the Change Champion capacity and the nomination of additional Champions from the regions. The roles of the Champions will be reviewed and aligned with the PPECB Client Support model currently being implemented.

The following achievements were accomplished for the reporting period of 1 April 2023 to 31 December 2023:

• Re-inspection module enhancement;
• TITAN 2.0® product inspection (PI) module and addendum module to pull Master Data from Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS);
• TITAN 2.0® and MMDS integration detail;
• Addendum five-day error;
• Validate that the inspection booking start date is not in the future when an inspection message is sent by the client;
• Remove the link between the pack code and the product;
• Kenya special market for pome fruit;
• Pears to China special market;
• Validation of pallet quantity and carton quantity not to include special characters;
• Increase of orchard field length in e-Addendum;
• Performance issues on Addendum view resulting in delays with the processing of certificates;
• Fruit age on e-Addendum is not validating;
• A fix so that Re-Inspection messages (files) with multiple sequences do not validate the sequencing against the First Inspection data; and
• Update the error messages on product inspection validation when the Tracking Unit Manager (TUM) is not reachable.

56 486 Electronic Export Certificates were processed on the TITAN 2.0® platform for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 December 2023. The previous year, for the same period, there were 6 659 certificates processed electronically, which is an increase of 49 827 certificates. This number exceeds the total number of certificates that were processed for the entire 2022/2023 financial year (14 431). Most of the certificates were processed for citrus, and that amounts to 50 064 electronic certificates. Some challenges were experienced with production areas, size/count validation, slowness of the system in processing electronic addendums, and split pallet information. However, all these matters were investigated, and solutions were implemented to address these challenges. The first electronic certificates were also processed in the Gauteng and Grabouw regions. With the deciduous season commencing, year to date 5 466 certificates were processed electronically for pome fruit, stone fruit, and grapes, compared to 1 991 for the same period during the previous financial year.

CONTAINER INSPECTIONS
Enhancements were made to the container inspection module to align with the new financial system (ERP) for seamless billing. The weekend and public holiday change request was approved, and the stories were completed. The stories will be in development in early January. The TITAN 2.0® team have commenced internal user acceptance testing to determine the functionality of release two (pre-trip, dual and calibration inspections). Thus far, very positive results have been obtained, and all functionalities are working well. Once the weekend and public holiday story is deployed into production, we can review going fully live with the container inspection module.

EXPORT NOTIFICATION (EN)/CONTAINER LOADING
A total of 98% of all containers packed in the Northern Cape were done on the TITAN 2.0® platform. The containers were electronically booked by the forwarding agents and also electronically loaded by the Assessors. The enhancement of the Assessor working programme was commissioned, and the enhancement of the Lead Assessors working programme is a work in progress. A task team has been established to review the requirements for non-food business operators to utilise TITAN 2.0®.

COLD STORAGE INSPECTIONS
The development for this module commenced.

ORGANISATIONAL LINKING
Non Food Business Operators (FBOs) cannot currently utilise TITAN 2.0®. The current organisation linking and registration module only caters to clients with FBOs and inspects and exports regulated products under the APS Act. Clients exporting perishable products, such as marine, meat, and confectionery products, under the PPEC Act cannot currently make use of the TITAN 2.0® application. A newly launched architectural forum, comprising representatives from all departments, was launched to review complex matters cutting across all departments. It is envisaged that the requirements for this change are major and will take a few months to develop and deploy.

The PPECB has initiated the introduction of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to replace its legacy NAVISION system. The ERP software selected is Microsoft Dynamics 365. With the implementation of the software, the PPECB seeks to create further process efficiencies and an enhanced customer experience.

The implementation took place in two phases. Release 1 was successfully implemented on 15 November 2022, and these were mainly the financial modules of D365. Release 2 went live on 10 August 2023 and consisted of the more transactional operational items of D365, including the time and expense module for all employees to capture their own time and expense claims, thereby reducing the capturing burden on administrative employees.

The ERP will allow the PPECB to:

• Automate and integrate business processes and data to bring about efficiencies in how to get work done and how to centrally enter, access, and manage data;
• Integrate systems to meet client expectations of a consistent and professional service;
• Improve business intelligence and reporting capabilities; and
• Improve the experience of customers, partners and vendors.

The challenges affecting the business are a combination of system and user issues. Many of the user issues have stabilised, as evidenced by the drop in the volume of support calls logged per day. However, the system challenges have remained. These are currently being tackled systematically in the order of priority, where issues hindering billing are the top priority, followed by issues that could cause reputational damage, then enhancements that will minimise capturing errors, and finally, the list of post-go-live enhancements. Information was requested from the regional managers regarding the challenges experienced by the employees that relate to the Time and Expense process for both completion and approval. A working group was established, and a meeting was set up with Altron Karabina (AK) to discuss the enhancements on 18 December 2023. AK will investigate the proposed changes, and feedback will be provided to the working group.