Modelling the South African fruit export infrastructure: A case study

Abstract

A description is provided of work performed as part of the fruit logistics infrastructure project commissioned by the South African Deciduous Fruit Producers' Trust and coordinated by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, as described in Van Dyk FE & Maspero E, 2004, An analysis of the South African fruit logistics infrastructure, ORiON, 20(1), pp. 55–72. After a brief introduction to the problem, two models (a single-commodity graph theoretic model and a multi-commodity mathematical programming model) are derived for determining the maximal weekly flow or throughput of fresh fruit through the South African national export infrastructure. These models are solved for two extreme seasonal export scenarios and the solutions show that no export infrastructure expansion is required in the near future — observed bottlenecks are not fundamental to the infrastructure and its capacities, but are rather due to sub-optimal management and utilisation of the existing infrastructure.

Keywords: maximum flow, single/multi-commodity flow, fresh fruit export infrastructure

ORiON: The Journal of ORSSA Vol. 22(1) 2006: 35–57