After a quarter of a century of service to Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, Henk Griessel officially picked his last fruit, retiring at the end of last month following a career that has left an indelible mark on the deciduous fruit industry.

However, true to form, the Somerset West local will not completely disappear, as he will remain with Tru-Cape on contract to lend his expertise to an industry he has spent a lifetime building.

Griessel’s path into fruit was never straightforward. Raised in Cape Town, he originally dreamed of studying marine biology, but a bursary from the Deciduous Fruit Board set him on a different course. “When I started, I knew nothing,” he recalled of the early days – an admission that belies the decades of expertise that followed.

That expertise was built the hard way. Griessel cut his teeth running a laboratory for SAAPPA in Grabouw, in an era when large-scale controlled-atmosphere storage was being implemented.

A work contract took him to Chile in the late 1980s, where he worked gruelling hours, learnt Spanish and absorbed lessons in competitiveness that would shape his approach to his career.

“I realised the people out there are our competition,” he said. “We play a hard game every day – against New Zealand, America and large parts of Europe. That forces you to take it seriously.”

Orchard to lecture hall

He returned home to further his studies while working on the experimental farm and later completed his M.Sc. in Horticulture at Stellenbosch University (SU) in 1992, researching the loss of green colour on Granny Smith apples. After a stint as the pome fruit extension officer at Unifruco, Griessel became a lecturer in horticulture at SU for four years.

From there, he worked at Unifruco and Kromco before he was appointed the quality control manager at Tru-Cape, a role in which his technical authority became a reference point for the industry. He has served on the post-harvest research committees at Hortgro Science since 2004.

Colleagues describe Griessel’s real legacy as something broader than any title. After deregulation fractured the industry’s old collaborative structures, he was instrumental in rebuilding them – helping to re-establish industry discussion groups like the Packhouse Action Group and the Forelle Producers’ Association. These helped drive the industry-wide cooperation on issues from plastics to post-harvest research.

A mentor to many

He also co-authored books tracing the forgotten history of South African apple varieties, work that took him into centuries-old Dutch archives in pursuit of the industry’s origins.

Perhaps his proudest contribution, though, is measured in people. Over the decades, Griessel has mentored interns and students, the majority of whom remain in the industry. “It was a privilege for me to bring people into this industry. You build connections that last forever.”

Griessel’s story is also one of quiet resilience. In recent years, he faced serious health setbacks, including time on dialysis and a kidney transplant – an experience that reshaped his sense of time and purpose. “Every day is there to be lived,” he says. “I can’t stand people who don’t make use of their time.”

Colleagues say that same urgency and gratitude have long been part of what drives him.

Asked how he wants to be remembered, Griessel is modest: “I want to be remembered as an industry man. I don’t think I was ever exceptional; I was just part of the industry and plugged into it.”

As he steps into the new chapter, Griessel remains bullish about where South African fruit is headed, despite the pressures of logistics, costs and global competition. “I think we’re close to being among the top apple-exporting industries in the world again,” he said – a fitting note for a man who has spent 40 years helping to get it there.

Roelf Pienaar, Tru-Cape’s managing director, paid tribute to Griessel’s contribution: “Henk’s industry knowledge is unmatched and his fingerprints are on almost every part of how we produce and export quality fruit today. But what he leaves behind isn’t just technical expertise – it’s the people he’s trained and the standards he’s instilled across our business. I want to thank Henk for 25 remarkable years, and I’m glad he’s not going far.”