A two-decade-old vision to create an airport precinct development around the existing David Stuurman airport in Nelson Mandela Bay is back on the runway.Former Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) resident and now international logistics consultant Franco Eleuteri says there has been “enthusiastic” support for the concept by both the private and public sectors.Eleuteri was involved in the development of the King Shaka International Airport in Durban and the Tambo Springs project, amongst others in South Africa. “Coming back to Port Elizabeth after three years I could see the damage that Covid had done to the economy,” he told Freight News.“When I landed, I thought to myself that something has to be done – that a window to the world has to be opened.”Eleuteri has found that George has more f lights linking it to Gauteng than Gqeberha, and that the airport in Gqeberha has been downgraded from international to regional.Despite this, the Gqeberha airport handles more freight than Durban – third after Johannesburg and Cape Town.There are two daily freighter f lights, one to Johannesburg and the other to Cape Town.This capacity is augmented by road to the bigger airfreight hubs.Further research found that there is still land available around the David Stuurman airport – and that it is owned by the municipality.“There is lots of land that can be utilised to create an expanded world-class operation – a global logistics hub,” he says.The new airport development would be built around a new 3 300-metre-long runway as part of a logistics gateway and aerotropolis function. It will include infrastructures to handle increased passenger growth. “Such a plan would be synergistic to the existing Nelson Mandela University, the Bayworld Aquarium and Science Centre Redevelopment, the Coega Economic Development Zone, and the existing seaports,” he says.The motivation behind an airfreight logistics hub is that while sea freight carries the bulk of the world’s cargo, airfreight is the mode of choice for high-value goods.Direct international airfreight links create opportunities for the manufacturing of a wide range of high-value goods in a “Smart Village”, as well as crops such as cut f lowers.Eleuteri has held a number of workshops with local business leaders and public sector officials from the municipality, Eastern Cape Development Corporation, and others.The response has been enthusiastic, and the concept will be driven as a public private partnership.“I was taken in by the positive, can-do attitude of those attending,” he says.Funding is expected to come from the private sector as the government has simply run out of money, and the Airports Company of South Africa is recovering from the impact of Covid-19 on air travel.“South Africa has perhaps been too reliant on government for infrastructure investment in the past,” he says.For local and provincial government, the incentive for supporting the project is the jobs it will create and support, as well as the additional revenue it will generate for the metro and province.
