How does a South African farm actually get its produce into Europe?

Scott Cundill · 2026-09-23 · Johannesburg

By being introduced to a buyer who already trusts the person making the introduction, and by having your paperwork in order before that conversation starts. The trade itself is not the hard part. South Africa has been sending food to Europe for a very long time, the routes exist, the ships sail every week. What almost no grower has is a name on the other end who will take their call.

This is for growers and agri businesses in and around Johannesburg, and for the European buyers and investors looking the other way.

Why is Europe such a natural market for us?

Because our seasons are opposites, and that is the whole commercial logic.

When northern Europe is frozen and growing nothing, farms across South Africa are picking. Six months later it reverses. So South African produce is not competing with European produce, it is arriving precisely when European shelves would otherwise be empty. Buyers there are not doing anyone a favour by sourcing from the southern hemisphere, they need it to keep a year round supply.

The clock helps too. Johannesburg is two hours ahead of Greenwich all year, and Europe shifts its clocks while we do not, so the gap between us is an hour for part of the year and nothing at all for the rest. You can phone Rotterdam at eleven in the morning and catch someone at their desk. That is a real advantage over every other southern supplier.

So what actually stops a good farm from selling there?

Not distance, and not quality. It is that the buyer has no way to know you exist, and no reason to take a risk if they did.

European importers and retailers buy through people they have worked with for years. Their exposure is not the price of one container, it is a gap on a shelf in the middle of their winter, and a supplier who goes quiet in week 34 costs them far more than they saved. So they stay with who they know, and an unknown farm sending a cold introduction is the easiest email in the world to leave unanswered.

That is exactly the problem a warm introduction solves. When somebody they already trust says, this grower is good for it, the risk calculation changes completely.

What will a European buyer check before they will even talk?

Have these ready, because being asked and not having them is how a promising conversation ends.

Certification is the first gate. European retailers generally expect GlobalG.A.P. as a baseline, and many of the larger ones layer their own ethical and environmental audits on top. Without it you are not in the conversation, whatever the fruit looks like.

Traceability is the second. They will want to know the pack house, the block, the date. If a problem appears in Hamburg, they need to know within hours which consignment it came from.

Consistency is the third and it is the one that decides repeat business. A buyer plans a programme, not a shipment. Can you hold the volume for the whole window, every week, at a grade that does not wander?

Then the cold chain, the route and the paperwork. Which port, which shipping line, what temperature protocol, who handles the phytosanitary side, and what your record actually looks like on arrival.

South Africa also has preferential access to the European Union under its trade agreement, which improves the duty position for a great deal of agricultural product. Worth understanding properly, because it changes your landed price and therefore your pitch.

What about the other direction, investment coming in?

It is the half people forget, and it may be the larger one.

There is European capital that wants exposure to agriculture, and there are South African operations that could double if they had funding for irrigation, pack house capacity, cold storage or land. Those two groups have exactly the same problem as the buyers and the growers. They cannot find each other, and neither will move on a stranger.

An investor's first questions are not romantic. Who runs it, what is the track record, what is the water situation, how is the land held, what happens to the return if the rand moves. A grower who can answer those in one conversation is far ahead of one who cannot, and an introduction from somebody credible is what gets that conversation at all.

How do you make yourself easy to introduce?

Be specific, and be honest about size.

"We export fruit" is not something anyone can act on. "We pack forty containers of Valencia oranges between week 26 and week 34, GlobalG.A.P. certified, currently going through an agent, and we want a direct relationship with one importer in the Netherlands" is a sentence a connector can do something with this week.

Say plainly what you cannot do yet, as well. A buyer who discovers your real capacity later will not come back. One who knew from the start, and watched you deliver exactly what you promised, is the one who grows with you.

How does My Most Trusted support this?

By making sure the person making the introduction actually knows both parties.

Every trusted connection on the platform is added one at a time, with the member confirming they genuinely know that person. There is no bulk upload, so nobody in this network is a name scraped off an exporters list.

Before you approach a firm, the platform shows you who you already share, by name, and tells you honestly when the answer is nobody. If you share nobody, there is still a route, through a member who does know them, with your reason written out and every word visible before anything is sent.

Nothing goes automatically. The platform will draft, a person decides. In a trade this relationship driven, an automated approach is worse than no approach at all.

Where does the Agri Bridge come in?

It puts a named person on each side of the trade.

Peter Browne hosts the South African side from Johannesburg, where he runs Farming by Faith and works with agripreneurs building beyond a single season. The founding European seat is open, and we are looking for one connector there, most likely from the produce trade or agricultural finance, who wants to build that half deliberately.

Until that seat is filled, this is half a bridge, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

What should you do this week?

Write down the one sentence a connector could act on. What you grow or what you buy, the volume, the window, the certification, and what you want on the other end.

Then talk to Peter. If you are the person who should be holding the European end, that is worth a conversation too.