Aero Africa has launched another service to Johannesburg, says regional operations manager Gary Tobias.The company has been on a drive to scale up its service offering for some time as part of its longer-term growth strategy.“The new service constitutes a level 1 blocked space agreement (BSA) out of Heathrow to Johannesburg on British Airways,” said Tobias. “The airfreight rates are unrivalled, and this kind of service cannot be found anywhere else in the ma rket , cur rently. “One of our key advantages is being able to build our own build-up (BUP) with our partner at Heathrow.”Tobias said this allowed the company great f lexibility in terms of airfreight rates and space offerings to its clients. “We’ve structured our rates in such a way that our service encourages co-loads, so we can attract not only charges-collect traffic, but also the prepaid traffic.”He told Freight News that clients were increasingly demanding this kind of f lexibility from their service providers. “They are also looking for more reliable services and affordable rates which existed pre-Covid-19. Although we are not over the pandemic yet, we understand the need for this and we’re striving to implement more products like our Heathrow to Johannesburg service to give them the options and alleviate some of the economic pressures currently experienced in the supply chain.”Tobias said the biggest challenge in the airfreight sector was still extremely high rates. “In South Africa, we are also facing serious space constraints into Johannesburg, particularly from the Far East.”He said that, ironically, this was currently where the most opportunity was being identified.“With the Chinese New Year having recently passed, we expect this market to open up.”The ongoing trials and tribulations experienced in the ocean freight sector continued to boost airfreight operations, added Tobias. “Seaport congestion and rising sea freight costs across the globe continue to entice greater airfreight movement. We have an extremely positive outlook at present, not only for the local airfreight sector, but also for airfreight at large.
