Perishable niche pays off for ground handler

Companies importing and
exporting perishables through
Lusaka International Airport now
have a choice of ground handlers,
with NAC2000 having built a
cold room for vaccines and other
temperature-sensitive cargo.
Breaking into this market
has inspired managing director
Jonathan Lewis to help other
small and growing Zambian
companies to take advantage of
export and other airfreight-related
opportunities.
He says the company has learned
a lot since it built the cold room
and started handling imports of
vaccines, chocolate and even cakes,
and the export of solidago, a filler
used in flower arrangements.
NAC2000 has worked closely
with the solidago growers – a
process which Lewis says “has
been good for us”.
The company has however
built up experience in a variety of
diversified areas – the handling of
project cargo for the mines, ground
handling for private charters into
Lusaka, as well as managing the
loading of cargo as sensitive and
unusual as rhinos.
Lewis now wants to help develop
the capacity required to increase the
volumes of freight and aircraft at
the Lusaka, Livingstone and Ndola
airports where NAC2000 has
operations.
“We have sponsored the training
of a number of small entrepreneurs
and groups of entrepreneurs to let
them know about the opportunities
and the challenges of exporting and
importing,” he says.
NAC2000’s newly developed
understanding of the regulations
governing the export of
unprocessed agricultural products
is shared with the entrepreneurs in
order to help them break into export
markets using airfreight.
As a land-locked country,
Zambia has to build businesses
around airfreight in order to be
competitive.
Zambia, Lewis points out, has
preferential trade agreements with
a number of countries, and he
believes more can be done to take
advantage of the opportunities
created by these agreements.