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The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) said it had managed to negotiate a settlement that would see the clearing of citrus containers stuck in ports of entry in the European Union.
The Department said it had on Wednesday managed to clear more than 300 of the 509 containers and that it was processing clearance of the remaining containers.
This was after the EU introduced new measures to regulate the risk associated with False Codling Moth (FCM) on citrus fruit.
The new measures included amended additional phytosanitary declarations for grapefruit and soft citrus and a revised cold treatment regime for oranges.
The measures were published on 21 June 2022 and were set to come into force by 24 June 2022, meaning that consignments arriving in Europe from 14 July onwards needed to comply with the new measures.
Taking the shortest sailing time to the EU, meant that consignments that left South Africa on 24 June 2022, three days from the publication, should have been certified on the new measures.
The Department said it had explained to the European Commission in a meeting and through written communication that that date was unreasonable.
In a statement, the Department said at the time of the publication of the new measures, there were consignments that were certified and had already left for the EU, as well as some that were in the process of being exported.
"The reasonable date relating to compliance with new measures would have been for consignments leaving SA on 9 July 2022, considering required adjustments of systems and communication to the different regulatory sites, which required at least three weeks from publication," the statement read.
"The impasse was subsequently addressed through replacing phytosanitary certificates with the correct additional declarations starting from 22 July 2022.
The orange cases were still an issue until the industry in a meeting on 25 July 2022 presented to the DALRRD possible equivalence measures regarding treatment applied on these consignments under South Africa’s Systems Approach for FCM."
The Department said it was re-certifying orange consignments blocked in the Netherlands and Italian ports and that it was receiving confirmation that the containers were being cleared.
The ports that were presented by the industry as those where South African oranges were rejected included ports in Denmark, France and Germany, among others.
South Africa is the second largest exporter of fresh citrus products, after Spain.
