| Summary: | Abstract
Deregulation of the South African fruit export industry in 1997 caused
fragmentation in the supply chain. This led to significant inefficiencies
and difficulty in responding to increasingly stringent legal and traderelated
traceability requirements. Currently, the South African fruit
export industry does not provide a sufficient level of traceability at
supply chain level.
The consumer packaged goods industry has developed e-commerce
building blocks based on global standards. These building blocks offer
automated traceability of fruit exports, as well as significant benefits
impacting the bottom line, to companies of all sizes. The e-commerce
building blocks also provide solutions to the two main challenges faced
by the fresh produce supply chains, namely traceability requirements
and the need for additional efficiencies.
The e-commerce building blocks are available to the South African
fruit export industry to enable traceability, as well as to provide
significant efficiency benefits. It has been found that early adoption of
the e-commerce building blocks will result in a strategic advantage over
the southern hemisphere competitors and that automated traceability is
feasible for the South African fruit export industry. This article describes
the cohesiveness, willingness to participate and supportive thinking of
representatives from the important fruit export industry in South Africa,
which are necessary to create the critical mass for the implementation of
such an automated traceability system.
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