A new cold store from Southern African Fruit Terminals recently opened in the Western Cape, with easy assess to Cape Town Harbour.

The subsidiary of Belgium-owned SEA-invest Group opened the 5,500-pallet-capacity facility in Abland in June.

“This location provides easy access to Cape Town Harbour and our other facilities in Killarney Gardens and Paarl, but most importantly for farmers and co-ops transporting fruit for export,” said managing director Ockert Henning.

“The fruit destined for export is directed to the Atlantic Hills facility from all parts of the country, not just the immediate locations in the Western Cape."

He said the new investment is the "latest initiative to capture a sizable portion of the cold storage business of the rapidly growing fruit export market".

"Our Killarney Gardens facility (4 200 pallets) opened in 2014 and we upgraded the Paarl facility three years ago to increase capacity to 5 600 pallets," he said.

“As with our other sites, SAFT Atlantic is a state-of-the-art refrigeration facility specifically designed to protect the cold chain integrity and to load perishables into containers destined for export markets.

"We build this cold store taking our existing clients’ needs and growth potential into consideration. The facility is ideally designed to cater for specifically subtropical fruit, citrus, grapes, stone fruit and pome fruit."