Africa the consistent front runner in airfreight consolidations

Africa has entrenched itself as one of the top destinations for the airfreight division of independent consolidator CFR Freight – and Johannesburg branch manager – airfreight, Dave Gurney, is bullish about future growth on the route. “Over the year, Africa has consistently been our top destination – although it was recently superseded by the US because of huge volumes of textiles moving to that market,” Gurney told FTW. And the product mix is as varied as the destinations served. “There’s a huge amount of mining cargo, and we’re also seeing a lot more requests for cross trade into Africa,” says Gurney. Another area of strong potential is Delivered Duty Unpaid traffic into the region, and since we offer DDUs into 13 African countries, we believe we have the edge.” The biggest lanes are Lagos, Abidjan and Accra in West Africa, and Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in East Africa. While CFR recorded good growth in the first two quarters of the year, the real growth was evident in quarter three, general manager – airfreight Dave Graham told FTW. “The division really started from scratch at the end of last year – and that entailed recruiting a new management team and dedicated sales staff and putting all the processes in place, which took a lot of leg work. We were able to reap the dividends of our efforts in the third quarter.” Graham believes the company is ideally placed in terms of its size. “We’re not so big that our customers are an account number – but we’re big enough to have the buying power and punch with the airlines to negotiate competitive rates. “Our philosophy is not based on short-term business. We’re interested in longterm partnerships with our customers.”