China bought about 586 900 tonnes of cherries last year and paid roughly R53 billion for them. South Africa grew 3 006 tonnes over the same stretch, which was a record for the country. On Tuesday agriculture minister Willie Aucamp signed a protocol in Beijing alongside Sun Meijun of China's customs administration, opening the Chinese market to South African cherry growers for the first time.
South Africa is not a cherry country in any serious sense. Hortgro put it at 0.1% of global cherry exports in 2024, against a Chilean industry that supplies close to half of them. The entire national crop would not register on a Chinese buying week. What the protocol opens is not a market South Africa can fill, it is one it can now grow into.
From 185 hectares to 819
The industry is small but it has not been standing still. Plantings went from 185 hectares in 2012 to 819 in 2024, as stone fruit growers looked for better returns and a wider spread of markets. Two in five cherry trees in the country have not yet reached full production, so the volume is going to keep climbing regardless of who buys it. Around 58% of the crop is exported today, and 60% of those exports went to the United Kingdom last season, with the European Union and the Middle East taking most of the rest.
The fruit still has to satisfy China's quarantine rules, which is the part that took the time. Growers ran a second season of cold treatment trials to meet them after a first round came back encouraging, and remote video inspections were expected before the end of last year. Industry guidance ahead of the signing pointed to first exports in the 2026/27 season.
The second protocol in a year
This did not arrive on its own. It is the second market access protocol China has signed with South Africa inside a year, under a framework agreement that gives South African goods zero-tariff entry, and that arrangement runs to 30 April 2028. Trade between the two countries rose 33% to $34 billion in 2023 from $26 billion in 2019, on the trade department's figures, and South Africa has been hunting for markets that are not the United States or Europe. Blueberries are next in the queue: China has handed over a draft protocol and Aucamp has asked his team to finish it before the year ends.
Government expects the cherry opening to draw investment into orchards and add about 600 jobs. South African cherry exports usually start around the middle of October and peak before the end of the year, so the first real test of that arrives fairly soon.
