Timely and accurate inspection and shipping information is of high importance and great value for PPECB’s industry stakeholders. (The potential value or benefit to the Grape Industry alone is in the R 500 million to R 1 billion p.a. order of magnitude).

PPECB has an important role to play in this regard. PPECB acquires 100% of the inspection and shipment data and Industry requires PPECB to supply information on volumes inspected and shipped. This is a huge amount of data to process. However, PPECB’s data collection and capturing is currently all done manually and it is therefore not timely, accurate or cost effective.

It is estimated that the bulk (i.e. > 90%) of the Fruit Export Industries’ Electronic Intake (Inspection) Data is currently collected by a number of commercial organisations. (These are mostly Packers, Exporters and their Supply Chain Software Solution Providers).

It is further estimated that the bulk (i.e. > 90%) of the Fruit Export Industries’ Electronic Shipping Data is collected by the major Shipping Lines as well as Supply Chain Software Solution Providers.

The above mentioned Supply Chain Service Providers’ should be able to consolidate and make their data available to Stakeholders, within 24 to 48 hours.

Furthermore, PPECB requires EDI for the successful completion (implementation) of a number of Information System Projects that will improve its service and reduce risk in the supply chain. These are:

Ø       Sample Tracking & Management (requires EDI with the NDA Laboratories)

Ø       Temperature Management (requires EDI with the major Shipping Lines)

Ø       Electronic Export Certification (requires EDI with the major Packers, Exporters and/or their Software Solution Providers)

Ø       Quality Feed Forward (requires EDI with the major Packers, Exporters and/or their Software Solution Providers)

Establishing reliable and successful EDI between PPECB and Supply Chain Service Providers (such as Software Solution Providers and the Shipping Lines), is therefore of the utmost importance to Industry. It has the potential to be of great benefit to both Industry and PPECB.