Cost-effective service offers airport to airport option

ONE OF the Eastern Cape’s biggest airfreight exporters is growing a new market for companies and individuals wanting to send freight at affordable rates. This Side Up (TSU), which was established to handle the exports of ferns and cut flowers from the Eastern Cape, has started using its spare capacity to provide an airport to airport airfreight service for individual parcels. Couriers can use the service to carry consolidated packages and documents from one airport to another at highly competitive rates, according to founder Johan Gerber. The service, which is run by his wife Alison, received a boost when airlines started clamping down on overweight baggage. This was a potential blow to the many manufacturers, crafters, artists and shops catering for the tourist industry along the Garden Route and in the Eastern Cape. It could have seen the extinction of the ubiquitous giraffes and chubby hippos that are so popular with foreign visitors. While many can afford to courier the keep-sakes home, others are put off by the cost of transport, according to Gerber. This is where the new TSU service fills the gap. “Our service is cheaper than that offered by couriers as we deliver to the airport nearest the home of the tourist. Most are happy to pick up their mementoes themselves,” he says. Another market which has opened up for the service is taking excess baggage to and from South Africa for youngsters working abroad, for families who are emigrating and for people on contract.