Sold for One Rand: Who Is Really Eating Africa's Peaches?

In May 2025, Tiger Brands agreed to sell Langeberg & Ashton Foods to a producer-led consortium for R1, alongside a R150 million community trust. The price was nominal, not a valuation. Even so, the group had failed to find a buyer and had warned of closure, citing trade barriers and currency swings. The rescue saved more than 3,000 jobs, and farmers were right to celebrate. But a question remains: how does the jewel of African peach processing end up worth a single rand?

The timing makes it sharper. On 2 November, Washington confirmed plans to exclude South Africa from AGOA from 1 January 2027. Africa's peach problem has never been growing the fruit. The problem is who captures the value, and who Africa has been selling to.

A 25-million-tonne fruit that barely travels

USDA expects world output of about 25 million tonnes in 2026/27, with China at 17.3 million, the EU at 3.5 million, Türkiye at a record 1.2 million and the US at 660,000. That puts China near 70% of the global crop. Only about one million tonnes of fresh fruit is expected to cross a border, or roughly 4%.

Nobody agrees what this market is worth:

• One report values fresh peaches and nectarines at $3.1 billion in 2025.
• Another puts canned peaches alone at $12.27 billion.
• A third sizes canned yellow peaches at $396 million in 2024.

Those figures can't all describe the same industry, so we trust trade data instead. Fresh exports have averaged over $1 billion a year, and prepared peaches traded at $950 million in 2022. That gives about $2 billion in hard, visible trade. Pricing the whole crop at fresh-export rates implies a ceiling near $27 billion, by our own estimate.

The value league differs sharply from the volume league. Greece led prepared peach exports in 2022 at $360 million, ahead of China at $238 million, Spain at $80.1 million and South Africa at $70.5 million. Greece's cling crop is roughly 400,000 tonnes in a normal year, a fraction of China's fruit. Yet in April 2026 Greek canned slices traded at $1.48/kg against China's $0.97/kg. In one UK trade dataset, Greece logged £44.3 million against South Africa's £2.9 million.

Brand, proximity and trust are earning Greece a premium of about 50%. African fruit isn't inferior: hotel buyers in China and Japan prize South African cling peaches for their vivid colour in patisserie.

Africa's peach map: the north grows, the south earns

Africa produced about 990,000 tonnes in 2020 and exported just 36,185 tonnes, under 4%. North Africa grew 780,700 tonnes of that, about 79%.

North Africa eats what it grows. South Africa built the export machine, and that machine is exposed. About 80% of its canned fruit is exported, so a stronger rand hits margins directly. Its cling orchards have shrunk from 5,800 ha to 3,500 ha in a decade, a 40% loss. In 2025/26, cling volumes fell another 6%, partly because Langeberg took fruit only from its producer-shareholders, leaving other growers to the unstable informal market.

Ownership has moved too. Norway's Norfund is a principal shareholder in Langeberg alongside 100 producers, with the community trust on 10%. Premier Foods has acquired Rhodes Food Group and its Tulbagh cannery. South Africa's two canneries both changed hands in about a year, and one was saved with Norwegian development capital.

AGOA adds pressure, though it isn't the catastrophe some headlines suggest. Fruit preparations already pay the 12.5% US tariff, and Wandile Sihlobo says some products would rise to about 15.9%, well below the 30% of 2025. That average may hide far worse outcomes on some product lines. The US was the largest buyer of South African canned peaches, at 5,641 tonnes in 2022.

The uncomfortable truth: the can may be the wrong hill to die on

Here is where we part ways with the usual call for more factories. Canning is in trouble everywhere:

• USDA links lower California output to weak US demand for processed peaches.
• Del Monte, which handles about 35% of US canning fruit, has faced a liquidation application.
• The market is still working through high carry-over stocks.
• China is shipping 164,300 tonnes in eleven months at about $1,116 per tonne.

A new African cannery chasing that price would be walking into a fight it can't win. The opportunity lies in a wider product ladder, which is our own assessment below:

The signals already exist. Drought and small fruit sent a high share of the crop to juice or pulp, while Elberta peaches for drying stayed in strong demand and clingstone ran into oversupply. Growers are effectively being pushed up this ladder by accident.

Interafrica consumption: the market is small, and that's the point

We looked for a huge African canned-peach market and didn't find one. Nigeria's recorded imports were about $759,000 in 2022. Ghana's were $13,650 in 2023. Official figures do understate intra-African food trade, but not by enough to change the picture.

The pattern of supply is more revealing. South Africa holds 100% of Zimbabwe's recorded imports and 67% of Mauritius's. Côte d'Ivoire buys mainly via Belgium, Greece, Italy and France, with no African supplier among its listed origins. DRC buys from South Africa, Belgium and Italy. Some African shoppers are eating peaches routed through Europe.

The one true fresh corridor is Tunisia to Libya. Libya took 34,400 of Tunisia's 38,540 tonnes of fruit exports in 2025, about 89%, with peaches among the fruits shipped. It works because the markets are neighbours with shared tastes. That's a useful model and a concentration risk.

What AfCFTA changes, and what it doesn't

The tailwind is real. Afreximbank forecasts intra-African trade of $230 billion in 2026, with agri-food and manufacturing rising to 48–50% of flows. South African farm exports have historically faced an average 11% tariff in African markets, now set to decline.

Tariffs were never the only problem. In the WEF's mango purée study, duty-free shipments still met VAT, surtaxes and fees, and some buyers found sourcing outside Africa easier than from a neighbour. The same study found EAC common standards let purée move without repeat certification. That is the template peach products need.

Our verdict is that AfCFTA won't rescue the can, but it could make purée, juice and IQF viable across regions. It also unlocks something few are discussing: the seasons. South Africa's cling harvest runs January to March, while North Africa harvests through the northern summer. Together they could supply African retailers and processors for most of the year, with no reliance on European fruit.

What agribusiness should learn

1. Stop selling one product to one rich market. Eighty percent exposure to exports is a currency bet.
2. Build the ladder from second-grade fruit. Purée, juice and IQF should carry the margin the can no longer does.
3. Create offtake for independent growers. Shareholder-only intake protects a factory and can strand its neighbours. Toll processing would fill that gap.
4. Copy Greece on brand, not China on price. Origin-labelled African cling peaches can win in premium hospitality.
5. Target Africa's own buyers. Hotels, airlines, hospitals, schools and retailers can anchor volume.

What governments should learn

1. Fund the science. South Africa's edge rests on public research into cultivars such as Keisie. Heat-tolerant, low-chill varieties are the next race.
2. Don't wait for the crisis. Tiger Brands announced its exit in May 2020, and the handover came in October 2025. Five years of uncertainty cost orchards that take years to replace.
3. Agree standards before signing speeches. Mutual recognition for fruit products would do more than another summit communiqué.
4. Use public procurement. School feeding and hospital contracts can build demand for lower-sugar African fruit products.
5. Publish better data. Our best continent-wide figures are years old, and investors won't fund numbers they can't see.

The Brief

Africa isn't short of peaches. It's short of options. North Africa grows them and keeps them, South Africa cans them and ships them away, and the rest of the continent buys tiny volumes, some of it through Europe. The R1 sale was less a bargain than a warning about what happens when one product, one market and one factory carry a whole value chain.

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Note on the data: African figures run from 2018 to 2025 and do not all share a year. The product ladder, the $27 billion ceiling and the seasonal argument are Africa Brew Brief analysis rather than sourced fact.