Day and night

BidAir Cargo has acquired Imperial Air Cargo (IAC) in a deal approved by the Competition Commission. BidAir Cargo provides cargo administration and operations for British Airways/Comair, kulula.com and Mango Airlines in South Africa, and for more than a dozen regional and global airlines in neighbouring countries.

According to BidAir Cargo, IAC’s operation complements its current business model, whereby the company manages the daytime cargo operations of domestic passenger services.

The IAC network, on the other hand, uses three contracted Boeing 737-200F freighters on overnight services linking Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban. It uses road feeder services to connect Bloemfontein, George and East London to the four main airports.

“As two separate companies we collaborated closely in serving the express logistics industry for many years,” says Garry Marshall, BidAir Cargo’s managing director. “Couriers kept pressing us for the extra convenience of a one-stop shop, so combining these operations makes good business sense. We now have a comprehensive range of daytime and overnight express services to satisfy the total needs of the courier industry via one point of access.”

Since the two operations dovetail, there is no duplication of human resources and IAC personnel were comfortably accommodated on BidAir Cargo’s premises.