Many of you will already know, but on Tuesday we received the tragic news of the passing of our old friend Jan Lievens.
The announcement read: “It is with heavy hearts and sadness that we have to let you know of the sudden passing of our beloved husband and father Jan Lievens (20.02.1958 – 06.02.2023). He passed unexpectedly yesterday evening, Monday 6 February 2023. May he rest in peace.” — Christine and Nicolas.
He was always passionate about his work and about living life to the fullest. He was more than a friend, and a giant of a person in every respect. He was a regular contributor to Cold Link Africa and his articles were always a delight to read and written in a robust if not ‘salty’ style. It is perhaps fitting that his next — and last — contribution to the magazine is titled ‘Rubbing salt in the wound’.
He was single handedly responsible for changing the industry’s view on post-harvest care of produce. In the final article he gives a classic example: “I was invited out two weeks ago by a German table grape specialist buyer from a German fruit trading company. After a very nice dinner in Paarl, he stated the following: ‘After talking to you and realising that we work with a very technical and difficult product like table grapes, I now realise that for all these years we really did not put enough emphasis on correct postharvest procedures after harvest…’”
His passion for the subject was derived from his oft-mentioned statement that farmers and food producers pay little attention to the conditioning of their product after harvest, even though this affects 99% of their income. This was not a subject to him, but a crusade.
Jan was the best friend that the world could have and the gap he has left in our lives cannot be measured. The thoughts of Cold Link Africa go out to Christine Lievens and Nicolas Lievens.
We all hope that this year’s grape harvest will be the best on record so we can all celebrate the life’s achievement of Jan.
Have a look at Jan’s contributed articles to Cold Link Africa:
Industry needs holistic approach in postharvest…
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better
Let your fruit quality do the talking…
Table grape post-harvest is not a dark science
We’ve always done it this way…
Getting our act together – for the industry
Quality means considering many details…
An inconvenient truth revisited
Correctly engineered applied postharvest technologies
Speed syndrome in cooling fruit…
Table grapes are a different kettle of fruit