Airfreight capacity remains under pressure

Air freight capacity on the route between the USA and South Africa remains under pressure, according to Peter van de Biezen, national route development manager for Röhlig-Grindrod. “Whilst the market has been relatively stable in 2014, there has been a limited amount of direct lift from the USA through to South Africa,” he said. “Often the only way of addressing this is by moving cargo via Europe to South Africa, but that also has challenges. Due to the limited volume of exports from South Africa to Europe the carriers limit the capacity on the south bound leg.” According to Van de Biezen, the situation is further exacerbated by the global drive by airlines to rather use A380s. “It carries more passengers which means more luggage and less space to carry cargo, placing capacity under even more pressure. This results in off-loads over the peak or holiday periods when there is an increase in passenger travel.” He said the company was continuously working towards finding solutions to the issue around capacity for its clients. The company’s gateways in the States are John F Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). “We have a firm block space agreement with a premium carrier which covers the entire midwest and east coast of the USA,” he explained. “Through this agreement we are able to provide a reliable service 12 months of the year as opposed to a ten-month-ayear service which fails over peak periods when capacity is pushed to a minimum.” He said keeping transit times to a minimum remained important and the company now offered a consolidated transit time of two to three working days to both Johannesburg and Cape Town. “We have also worked towards reducing any damages by using unitised airline pallets for all our general cargo out of these centres, thus improving our service offering on the routes.” Van de Biezen said whilst the outlook for 2015 was positive, concerns about capacity remained, with some even predicting further pressure. INSERT & CAPTION We have worked towards reducing any damages by using unitised airline pallets for all our general cargo. – Peter van de Biezen