By Eamonn Ryan
For the reefer shipping and port logistics sector, the oversized 2025 citrus volumes meant extended vessel working hours and stretched cold-store capacity – a development that underlines southern Africa’s rising dominance as the southern hemisphere’s leading counter-seasonal citrus supplier.
The surge has reinforced how central the cold chain is to South Africa’s agricultural export economy: more fruit is moving, over longer distances, into more markets than ever before, placing sustained pressure on refrigerated handling infrastructure, temperature-controlled transport, and port-side efficiency.
This cold-chain strain is a direct result of a remarkable season. Southern Africa’s citrus growers ended the 2025 lemon season on a high, packing 41.5 million cartons (15kg equivalent) – a figure that far exceeded the initial forecast.
Citrus Growers’ Association (CGA) CEO Boitshoko Ntshabele said exporters had experienced “a good season” with expectations for an even stronger crop in 2026, Freight News reported.
“The 2025 lemon season concluded with a final packed volume of 41.5 million cartons, marking a year of notably high volumes in which markets held up well,” Ntshabele wrote in his weekly newsletter, according to Freight News.
Despite frost and hail concerns earlier in the year, which had pushed the March estimate down to 32.9 million cartons, fruit size improved significantly throughout the season. “Projections were revised upwards throughout the season, driven mainly by fruit size improvement, ultimately exceeding initial expectations,” Ntshabele said, according to Freight News.
All major regions outperformed expectations:
- Sundays River Valley: 17.1 million cartons (+30%)
- Senwes: 6.2 million (+44%)
- Boland: 3.7 million (+27%)
- Patensie: 3.5 million (+26%)
- Hoedspruit: 2.8 million (+8%)
Export markets comfortably absorbed the surge. Europe remained the dominant destination at 16.4 million cartons, while the Middle East lifted its intake to 12.8 million cartons from 11 million in 2024. Southeast Asia nearly doubled its volume to 2.4 million cartons, and Russia ticked up to 2.9 million.
A 12% increase in processing-grade fruit packed for export also helped clear the additional volume, Ntshabele noted.
Younger orchards continue to drive lemon production growth. Thirty-one percent of South Africa’s lemon hectares are between six and ten years old, while 15% are between one and five years old – a structural trend suggesting further long-term expansion.
Ntshabele summed up the outlook simply: 2025 had been “a good year for lemons and we look forward to an even better 2026 season”, Freight News reported.
The bumper lemon crop contributed significantly to total southern African citrus exports reaching 203.7 million cartons for 2025 – 23% more than the 164.6 million cartons packed in 2024 and the highest volume on record, according to Freight News.