South Africa’s Consul-General in Italy, Ms Titi Nxumalo, says there is a need to ensure alignment of the Oganics Sector to the Sustainable Development Goals for the sustainability and diversity. She was speaking at a Webinar organised by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic) in conjunction with the Consulate-General in Milan, Italy, to create awareness on the South African Organics Sector.

A selection of South African companies had the opportunity to market a range of products at the Open Virtual Business to Business Organics Show as part of the webinar. The products varied from personal care, food supplements, to botanical extracts , fresh fruit and vegetables, spices and wines.

The webinar provided an overview of the organics sector in South Africa with an intention to enhance exports and investments between South African and Italian companies.

The Director for Export Promotion at the dtic, Mr Luke Govender, highlighted the fact that due to the COVID 19 South Africa is moving towards becoming a knowledge-based economy, with a greater focus on technology, e-commerce and financial and other services.

“Through South Africa’s path of industrialisation, we have embarked on diversification of products, markets and suppliers in order to open ourselves to opportunities and investments coming from leading companies around the world. We would like suggest to rebalance the nature of South Africa’s trade and investment ties so that it will be sustainable over the long term,” he said.

Govender added that the South Africa is Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) largest producer comprising 53% of the region’s organic farmed land.

“As the region is a net exporter of organic products; it can be deduced that South Africa is also the region’s largest exporter. This does not infer that we are the region’s only exporter. Other countries that deserve to be mentioned are Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique, However SA’s relative production is considerably larger that SADC’s other leading exporters and thus its trade patterns will have a larger impact on SADC’s trade performance,” noted Govender.

He added that South African farmers, producers and exporters supply a limited range of good quality products and this strategy has allowed the country to build a reputation in exporting products such as fresh fruit, rooibos and honeybush tea and processed medicinal herbs to Europe; the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Japan and Switzerland among other countries.

Enquiries:

Sidwell Medupe-Departmental Spokesperson
Tel: (012) 394 1650
Mobile: 079 492 1774
E-mail: MSMedupe@thedti.gov.za
Issued by: The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition
Follow us on Twitter: @the_dti

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