Mother City extends its airfreight capacity

Massive upgrades at Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) are good news for airfreight, given management’s commitment to upgrading and extending facilities as part of the process. According to Deon Cloete, the airport’s general manager, around R7 billion will be invested in a new runway as well as improved domestic and international terminals. “The new runway will allow for much better operational capability at the airport,” he told FTW. Currently, three cargo operators are licensed at CTIA. The contracts with all three operators were recently extended for three years after the

process went to market, according to Cloete. He explained that the plan was to develop a cargo and logistics  cluster for the airport  and surrounding areas. “We are constantly reviewing and evaluating our existing and new markets to grow our airfreight services.” Cloete added that it  was critical not only to upgrade the existing facilities but also extend the capacity. “We have continued to see massive growth capability at the airport for airfreight. There has been a real increase in air cargo exports,” he said, indicating that one of the contributing factors was the Cape’s ongoing air access programme. Cloete said the

focus going forward was on facilitating the development of logistics surrounding the

airport to draw not only support services such as forwarding agents, cargo operators and couriers,

but also to attract the light manufacturing sector to set up plants near the airport.