Charter business booms

CHARTER BUSINESS into Africa is growing by the month, says Birkart Globistics general manager product development and marketing Chris McGrath.
More and more enquiries to airfreight food for the various food programmes, pharmaceuticals for health organisations, mining equipment and, more recently, military equipment are flowing in and keeping the charter market buoyant.
“About 18 months ago one had access to a handful of charter companies. This has grown significantly, with numerous companies establishing offices or sales agencies in South Africa to compete with the local charter agents,” he says.
Its a logical development with capacity on scheduled airline services restricted, as the majority of airlines operate 737s that offer very little capacity.
“Restrictions on airlines accepting cargo to numerous destinations has been the order of the day and will carry on until airlines see the light and introduce aircraft with greater uplift capacity,” says McGrath. “To certain regions airfreight is the only option due to poor roads and very little or no rail links with South Africa.”
As the gateway into Africa, he believes that all efforts should be made by the airlines to reassess the requirements of South African airfreight exporters. “Otherwise there will be no growth, and it
is into Africa we must look for development of our products.”
At the same time McGrath points out that one of the stumbling blocks in exporting into Africa, especially by air, is the general lack of qualified agents to handle the complete clearance at the point of destination. This, coupled with a high level of bribery, has made South African exporters a little more circumspect in ‘doing deals’ with Africa, he says.
“The economic situation of traditional markets such as Zimbabwe has been hampered by the worsening political situation, which has a rollover into the economic sector. The purchase of products that have historically been exported to Zimbabwe has in certain instances reduced by 70%.”