Healthy growth defies stronger rand

HOW IS the airfreight export industry doing? First, there was the strengthening of the rand in 2003, and the fact that it had negative effects on exports was – and still is - a major concern in the logistics industry. But, despite this evil omen, airfreight from SA has looked surprisingly healthy. According to figures released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) – and on which the FTW Top 30 airfreight export agents league is based - the members in the airfreight industry realised an almost 50% growth in air exports during 2003. This was indicated by the total IATA turnover in airfreight exports for the year hitting the R1.9-billion mark – a 49.48% growth on the R1.3-bn of 2002, which in turn was only up 8.3% on the R1.2-bn of 2001. The first five in the 2003 Top 30 – Grindrod PCA, Kuehne & Nagel and UTi (listed as Pyramid Freight in the IATA list), Skyservices and Röhlig Grindrod – logged up over R733-m, or 38.5% of the total IATA turnover. The big performers percentage-wise in the league were UPS Supply Chain Logistics (still listed as Fritz Companies in the 2003 IATA charts) with a 173.3% increase; Freitan with 100.2% and World Net Logistics with 94%. There was a crop of others with over 50% increases: Schenker SA (+66.3%); Exel Supply Chain Services (+65.3%); Kintetsu World Express (+59.8%); SAEL – listed as Seaways by IATA – (+59.2%); Impson Freight (+55.8%) and Bachmann Megafreight Services (+53.3%). The top five performers in cash increases were: UPS with a R54.8-m increase in turnover; Röhlig Grindrod with R32.8-m; Freitan (+R32.1-m); Schenker (+30.8-m) and Skyservices (+R27.3-m). There were 53 agents in the IATA statistics for 2003 – an average of R35.9-million turnover per agent for the year.