Charter specialist keeps DRC mines on track

CONCENTRATING ON the transport end of chartered cargo shipments and allowing clients to handle their own import and export arrangements reduces a transport company’s headaches, Johannesburg-based Aersud Logistics has found from years of experience. “Our customers do their own documentation, so customs problems don’t affect us. They can sometimes be messy. Our job is to bring chartered deliveries from point A to point B. All of our business is charter business,” said company director Dons Vorster. Word of mouth – “the big companies talk to each other, and word gets around about us,” Vorster said – has brought in that business, which ranges from SA-made mining and drilling machinery taken to the DRC and Angola to humanitarian aid flown to Chad. Aersud’s leased DC-10 or DC-8 aircraft can accommodate up to three six-metre containers. “For shipments from Cape Town it can be expensive for us to fly there, so customers often send up cargo by road. It’s containerised all the way. For instance, we ship DMS plants, which are diamond recovery units, and these are shipped complete in containers,” said Vorster. Some cargo shipped by air charter arrives by sea. This year a particularly large consignment arrived at Walvis Bay and was airfreighted by Aersud from Windhoek.