Africa’s ‘Moon Shot’: Preparing for an African air cargo renaissance

Perishables given new life

Africa is, of course, far more complex than one nation, one space program or one political goal – it is a collection of 55 separate, diverse countries and cultures, each with airfreight capacities and technologies that vary immensely.

With more than 50 destinations in its network, as well as two in Europe (London and Liège), Gadhia’s Astral Airlines flies to a wide variety of African locations, including some remote places, such as South Sudan and Somalia, where there is limited airport infrastructure available. In South Sudan, Astral has invested in an airside terminal to take care of its own volumes and is considering similar investments in other airports, such as Pemba (POL) in Mozambique. “If the infrastructure does not exist, we take it upon ourselves to invest in it,” he said.

On the other end of the scale, “You have very mature markets, such as automotive ex-South Africa and flowers ex-Kenya, which are constantly driven toward process improvement,” said Jamie Anderson, director of African solutions for air cargo broker and virtual carrier, Aero Africa. “Outside of these key verticals, it’s fair to say the freight forwarding community in Africa has not enjoyed much development nor pursued the full use of technology further.”

The area that is attracting the most interest now in foreign infrastructure investment is in perishables – mainly outbound flowers, fruits, vegetables and fish. “I can only speak for South Africa, where the infrastructure is well-developed,” said Bernd Julicher, country manager and director of Skyservices, the South African perishables forwarder purchased last year by Swiss forwarding giant, Panalpina. “But O.R. Tambo International [JNB] now requires larger air cargo facilities, as it is growing out of the current basically 40-year-old facilities.” Many forwarders, he said, are already contracted with freighter capacity in and outbound, adding that there is currently “sufficient capacity ex-JNB and Cape Town International [CPT] outbound in the form of line flight belly capacity and current freighter schedules to meet current demand.”

Back at NBO, Panalpina has been active in terms of infrastructure development. At the end of November, it doubled its cold storage space at NBO to 1,500 square meters to enable more capacity for its Kenyan perishables export trade. According to Panalpina, the facility is the only one at NBO with loading bays for skidded or palletized cargo and with separate cold rooms to manage individual temperature requirements.

Panalpina become a major international player in Nairobi in 2015, with the acquisition of perishables firm Airflo and, later, of Air Connection. Thanks to Panalpina’s investments in Kenya, the country’s perishables, including fresh-cut flowers, have become prominent not only in European markets, but also in the Asia-Pacific region. Panalpina currently moves about 65,000 tonnes of flowers, fruits, and vegetables per year to Europe and Asia, but plans to increase that figure 80,000 tonnes by 2020.

Panalpina’s growth in perishables has continued elsewhere in Africa, too. Last year, in addition to Skyservices, Panalpina added FX Logistics, a new air cargo agent in Zimbabwe, to the Panalpina Perishables Network, which spans 26 countries worldwide.

Panalpina’s chief Swiss rival, Kuehne + Nagel, also made plans for 12,000-square-meter, build-to-suit facility in Johannesburg last November. The new “Skycenter” will provide additional airfreight operations and warehouse space at JNB, and will be equipped with cold rooms, bonded areas, secure areas, high bay racking.

Marcus Balzereit, managing director of K+N Southern Africa, said the new space “is an important milestone to support growth in automotive, perishables and retail logistics,” and is also “an integral part of the KN PharmaChain network” for sub-Saharan Africa. K+N currently has 11 offices in South Africa and, since purchasing Commodity Forwarders, Inc., in 2017, is also one of the largest perishables specialists in Kenya.

Currently, foreign companies dominate the airfreight market for perishables with 90 percent being uplifted by foreign carriers in Kenya, Gadhia said, whereas in Ethiopia, the national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines, uplifts 100 percent of perishables grown in that East African nation.

“More airfreight capacity is needed for perishables in Africa,” he said. “However, this has to be matched with demand – otherwise it will result in capacity dumping, which is the case in certain regions in Africa.”

Some forwarders are seeing an uptick in demand for nonperishables as well, from Africa. “Many large European and U.S. fashion companies are also outsourcing their manufacturing processes to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania,” said Janaka De Silva, vice president of airfreight in the Middle East & Africa region for DB Schenker. “We are involved in this retail business. Additionally, we carry automotive, aerospace parts and consumer electronics to and out of other African countries.”