Knowing the terrain provides the edge

Road transport can be complex enough in Angola without second or third parties taking part in a shipment’s movement like relay racers exchange a baton. To provide the door-to-door service preferred by its customers, veteran Angolan transporter Castle Transport has had to anticipate logistics challenges with on-the-ground intelligence. “We handle abnormal loads as well as project shipments, and knowing the country’s terrain gives us an advantage. For instance, we have taken abnormal loads up the Liba Pass, which had never been done before,” said Gerrie Coetzee, co-owner of the company with Ronèl Coetzee. In addition to the famously difficult Liba Pass, the country’s regular road system offers extreme challenges. In its nearly two decades of operations in Angola, Castle Transport has found the value of doing reconnaissance work, surveying routes to scout out difficult portions of the Angolan road infrastructure. They have vast knowledge of the different routes and requirements needed to handle transport in Angola. “We send up to 35 trucks a week up into Angola from South Africa. What we offer our customers is reliability, with daily satellite tracking,” said Coetzee. Maintaining standards and ensuring reliability is achieved by knowing road freight challenges in Angola – which comes from years of experience and having in place a complete shipping infrastructure. Breakbulk cargo is consolidated at a company warehouse in Gauteng. Clearing goods into Angola is another major challenge. Castle saw this as an opportunity to offer an extended service to its customers, dug into this complicated process and affiliated itself with a worldwide clearing company, together offering a clearing service at the border for the Castle customer. The customer now knows in advance what the clearing costs could be and Castle oversees and monitors the completion of the process. “We oversee projects as cargo arrives in Durban harbour through to the Angolan delivery point, and when required we personally escort these convoys. We believe in personal attention and involvement. Some of our cargo comes from Mozambique, which means we travel and clear through five countries,” said Ronèl Coetzee. Beyond shipments to Luanda, Castle services Soyo, Saurimo, Huambo, Benguela, Lobito, Lubango and Namibe, but has been called upon to transport to other destinations by some major shippers who know that swift road transport in the often challenging conditions of Angola require a firm that maintains nationwide contacts and does its homework.