Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies has reiterated his department’s support for agroprocessing, saying on Monday that it had injected some R1.2-billion into the industry since 2009.

Government’s Industrial Policy Action Plan had identified the agroprocessing industry as a manufacturing subsector that could act as a vehicle for value-addition to the country’s agricultural products.

“It is not by incident that, since 2009, we have supported agroprocessing industries to the tune of R1.2-billion. The industry is important because real income potential and job opportunities lie in adding value to existing agricultural activity,” he commented in a statement.

Further emphasising the sector’s economic importance, Davies cited a report released earlier this year by financial services firm KPMG, which indicated that Africa produced and exported $6-billion worth of coffee, which was then exported, processed and transformed into products that sold for $100-billion.

“Around $94-billion of the value is thus captured outside the continent. The promotion of agroprocessing is an extremely important stream of industrialisation; not just in our country, but across the African continent at large,” he said.

Davies added that the establishment of agroprocessing industries assisted in driving agricultural production in areas without pre-existing production. 

One of these was the packaging industry, which he said was able to grow and flourish as a result of progress in agroprocessing.

“Agroprocessing is the subsector in which we have deployed the largest chunk of our financial resources. Our Manufacturing Competitiveness Enhancement Programme is [more] evidence of the importance that we attach to the industry,” he outlined.

Davies’s comments followed on a meeting with businesspeople and workers at the Callie De Wet Hall, in Robertson, during a one-day visit to the Langeberg municipality as part of the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI’s) ‘Taking the DTI to Factories’ campaign.

The campaign was aimed at affording the department’s leadership an opportunity to interact with manufacturers and exchange ideas on their contribution to the industrialisation efforts and identifying opportunities, challenges and constraints to employment creation.