Swaziland’s Express Cargo liquidated

A chapter was closed in the annals of Swaziland’s road freight transport industry with the liquidation last week of Express Cargo. One of Swaziland’s oldest cargo transport firms, the company was one of the first businesses to set up at the Matsapha Industrial Estate outside Manzini over 30 years ago. In recent years Mark Svenningsen took over as managing director from his father, company founder Sven Svenningsen. Express Cargo specialised in overnight parcel delivery and pioneered customs clearing and freight tracking technology in Swaziland. On Friday Master of the High Court of Swaziland granted Express Cargo a provisional liquidation order. Employees arrived to find offices locked and company trucks mounted on blocks, their tyres removed. Phones went unanswered at the company’s Matsapha office, and were disconnected at its Ngwenya branch. It is not known what effect the end of operations in Swaziland will have on the firm’s routes from Botswana and Lesotho, where Express Cargo maintained warehouses, to Johannesburg and Durban. The Swazi Observer quoted Svenningsen as saying, “I feel like I have lost a favourite son with that company, but some of these things simply cannot be avoided. The state we were in did not allow us to continue, and liquidation was the only option.” The newspaper reported that Svenningsen was overcome by emotion and “he could only speak between sobs.”