We continue to see encouraging momentum in South Africa’s maize exports. The efficiency at various ports is improving this year, after the challenges of recent years.
Our maize exports are also recovering in the various regions of the world. Last year, we exported a lot to the African continent, which faced low production because of the drought. This year, we are resuming our exports in the Far East and various parts of the world.
One country that has shown up in our maize export list for three consecutive weeks is Venezuela. I am again mentioning them, not that Venezuela is a lucrative market, but the point is that we are back in export markets beyond the continent in the maize industry. We all know the challenges of the Venezuelan economy.
I’m looking at South Africa’s weekly maize exports data, and Venezuela imported 32,999 tonnes of South African white maize variety in the week of 15 August 2025 (following a consignment of 15,134 tonnes in the previous week).
The last time Venezuela was in our maize export list with a decent maize purchase before reappearing this year was in 2018, with about 31,500 tonnes of maize imports. So far this year, Venezuela imported 65,999 tonnes of white maize variety.
Anyways, I wanted to highlight in this post that South Africa exported 44,093 tonnes of maize in the week of 15 August 2025. About 74% was exported to Venezuela, and the rest to the Southern African region.
This placed South Africa’s 2025-26 maize exports at 535,866 tonnes, out of the expected seasonal exports of 2.12 million tonnes. The current marketing year only ends in April 2026. We will likely see more robust export activity later in the year as the demand increases in other regions of the world.
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