At the recent annual general meeting of the Sandveld Potato Producers’ Association held in Velddrif, Philé van Zyl, director at the Cape Town Market, spoke about plans to expand and upgrade the facility’s trading floor. He spoke to Glenneis Kriel.
How have sales grown since the Cape Town Market was privatised in 2003?
We’ve been fortunate. Sales have kept up with inflation, growing by 18,5% over the past two years. A steady increase in support has occurred since privatisation, allowing us to start saving for the much-needed upgrade of infrastructure.
The Cape Town Market is the largest private fresh produce market in the country and the third-biggest overall, after the Johannesburg and Pretoria fresh produce markets. Farmers from as far as Limpopo and Namibia supply the Cape Town Market daily.
Fresh markets have been criticised for not carrying the best interests of farmers. What are you doing to address this perception?
The Cape Town Market is quite clear about the role played by all its stakeholders. Farmers are the Cape Town Market’s primary customers. Our duty is to provide farmers throughout Southern Africa with a secure, transparent, business-friendly sales platform. We see market agents and traders in fresh produce as our co-workers in the process of providing a world class fresh produce service to the people of the Western Cape.
Sometimes, the market may not live up to the expectations of inexperienced participants. This is probably because market leaders in the past allowed the sales service to degenerate into a dualistic system were it became difficult to distinguish between agents and wholesalers.
In such an ill disciplined structure, it sometimes happened that wholesalers were allowed to masquerade as agents to the detriment of unsuspecting farmers. The management of the Cape Town Market has addressed this problem diligently to ensure the best possible outcome for all parties and stakeholders.
There have also been complaints that some role players abuse market information to manipulate prices.
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