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FRUIT EXPORTER TRACKS $1 BILLION OF PRODUCE FROM AFRICA TO EUROPE
It's hard enough to get home from the grocery store with unbruised apples, oranges and other produce. How would you like to be responsible for safely delivering 83 million cartons - or about threequarters-of-a-million tons a year - of oranges, plums, apples, mangos and avocados from South Africa to a host of European countries? And make that on time and in good shape.
That is the challenge posed to Gwynne Foster, current manager of information services at Capespan International PLC, based in Farnham Royal, England. The company is jointly owned by two South African fruit exporting companies: citrus exporter Outspan International in Pretoria and deciduous-fruit exporter Unifruco Ltd. in Cape Town. The company reached $825 million in revenue in 1995 and hopes to increase that to $1.5 billion by 2000.
For Foster, managing information systems means finding solutions for marketing, distributing and selling South African fruit to Europe. Her main challenge has been to implement a transcontinental system that ensures Unifruco's Granny Smith apples and Outspans navel oranges make the trip to Europe safely and on time.
"The situation is becoming more complex and difficult, and we are radically rethinking some of our earlier strategies," she said.
NO BANANAS TODAY
South Africa's recently renewed ability to trade with Europe, along with changing market forces in the produce industry, made it clear to Capespan in the early 1990s that it needed to change the way it moved its product.
"What has...