As part of SIZA’s drive to support producers by providing a cost-effective approach toward third-party audits, taking into account the various markets that are supplied globally, SIZA has investigated some of the major benchmarks and agreements completed to understand the cost-benefit and savings to the producer and the industry at large.

Similarly, the benchmarks against the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative and Rainforest Alliance save the industry approximately R180 000 and R2 208 900, respectively. It is clear that engagements with partners such as Sedex and GLOBALG.A.P. provide visibility to producers supplying markets in the UK and EU, resulting in a cost saving of +/- R5 000 per producer per audit. This translates to a saving of R9 263 552 for the industry for Sedex and R6 030 000 for GLOBALG.A.P. visibility.

The goal of maintaining partnerships with other global programmes and conducting benchmarks against other standards is to ensure that South African agricultural producers can access all the major global markets by only maintaining their SIZA compliance for both the Social and Environmental Standards.

The example below looks at a hypothetical producer with a farm and a packhouse growing and packing table grapes and citrus for export to North America, the UK, and Europe. Through the equivalence and benchmarks provided by SIZA, this producer has an estimated saving of R44 160 per year related to compliance costs. Furthermore, the potential savings to the Citrus industry is approximately R33 870 720, and R14 616 960 to the Table Grape industry, adding up to total industry savings of R48 487 680.