Export of perishables from Africa, our biggest business – Emirates SkyCargo chief

The world of cargo in the aviation business continues to expand, with Africa leading with the export of perishables. This has greatly added to the advancement of Emirates SkyCargo, a subsidiary of Emirates Group that is making waves in the cargo business globally. The company’s Senior Vice President, in charge of cargo products and innovation, Dennis Lister, speaks on the current trend of cargo, its success story in Africa, and the advancement of Emirates SkyCargo, particularly in the freighting business, with special attention to Africa, in this interview with OLASUNKANMI AKINLOTAN

When did Emirates SkyCargo start operations, and how deeply is it entrenched in Africa?

In Africa, we operate 172 passenger flights and eight freighters weekly into 20 gateways.

If you look across Africa, these are the main gateways we feed into. I think what is super interesting, if you look at the main feed that we have from Africa, outbound-wise, is a lot of fresh produce moving out. Mix of fresh produce in terms of food, vegetables, meat, berries, and all that sort of stuff.

Right from the north to the south, even right down to Namibia, where we are now shipping out berries, tangos, dates, and a whole range of different things. Our main market is Nairobi. We operate 33 per cent of our total volume from Nairobi.

Eighteen per cent of our total volume comes from Johannesburg, 12 per cent from Cape Town, and then seven per cent  from Uganda, Entebbe. So that’s our sort of largest network that we operate volumes feeding out of Africa. And if you now look at our network, we have a total fleet of 259 planes, of which 10 are dedicated freighters.

We also have five wet-lease 747s. Specifically local to this country (Kenya), we operate two freighters per week, and we operate two daily passenger flights every single day. So, our commitment to Africa continues.

As one of my colleagues said to me earlier, if you throw the seeds on the ground in Africa, something will grow, and you start a farm, and you can start shipping. And that’s essentially what we are doing here in Africa, to continue to support with our capacity. I can tell you now that other carriers have pulled out of Africa to reposition freighters to try and deal with the rise of e-commerce in different markets in the Far East.

Our commitment remains here, and we continue to provide capacity out of Africa. That is why we put the freighters into Nairobi. And this will continue from our perspective.

If you look at our fleet, in the next decade we’ll increase our freighters by 15, more than 15 freighters. And the goal is to inject more freighter capacity into Africa to support the growers and the farmers to try and make sure we can get your exports out to the rest of the world. The other thing is that it is about supporting food and supply so that countries around the world do have a continuous flow of food into the countries.

What challenges did Emirates SkyCargo face as a freighter company during the COVID-19 pandemic?

This brings me to logistics and resilience. And that is really important. Because if you see, if we remind ourselves of COVID-19 in 2020, when the network got shut down, capacity disappeared. Food stopped moving around the world. And we then very quickly started our fleet, our passenger fleet, to start carrying cargo. Even the passenger aircraft, Boeing 777-300Rs, became mini freighters.

We started operating those across the world to start the supply chain again. Because everyone’s dependent on the supply chain. Logistics was a small component before COVID-19 from people’s understanding. But the minute you turn it off, people then realise the impact you have on people who are growing in the farms and jobs and getting products out into the market. So, we continue to fly. So that is our commitment here in Africa.

We continue to support it, and I believe there is a lot more to be done, as the world is getting bigger. There are more exports coming out of Africa, and we show our commitment by investing in infrastructure and people. Africa is by far our single largest perishable market. You can see the common denominator with all of these export markets is perishable, either fruit, vegetables, or fish. But then on the inbound, it is hugely important to us on the freight on the inbound.

You can see a big common denominator as well on the inbound is pharmaceuticals. There are export markets for pharmaceuticals from Egypt and South Africa, but predominantly our biggest piece of business is perishables. And for that perishable business, we hugely invest in the cold chain. We work very, very closely with the key ground handlers who have the infrastructure to take care of the perishables to make sure we keep them cold so they last longer. And that is not just for flowers, but for all perishables. And that goes out to our network in Dubai.

All of our aircraft generally, some of the flower freighters go directly, but the rest of the passengers go into Dubai, into our hub, where we also have the largest cold chain facility in the world. We also have cool dollies on the ramp to protect the cargo when it is the critical risk point for all this cargo is when it is outside on the tarmac. And we protect that by using our cool dollies.

Outbound from Dubai, we then work very, very closely with our ground handlers worldwide to make sure also that they have the infrastructure needed to make sure that they maintain that cold chain facility. So, Africa as a whole is hugely important to us, and it is going to grow. With the capacity that we are bringing into the market, a lot of that will be deployed into Africa as well.

In terms of figures, how many tonnes of perishables do you take out of the continent?

If you look at Africa alone, we are moving 95,000 tonnes out of Africa annually, which is 95 million kilos. You were wondering what is the difference between fresh and hard freight? The difference is that we send more perishable cargo out of Africa than we do hard freight because that is the priority. That is what Africa produces.

Twenty million more kilos are perishables. We do carry other products, like we still carry diamonds and gold out of Africa, which is super important, which means we are not a one-trick pony. We operate across all the verticals. We invest infrastructure in securing diamonds and gold. We invest in infrastructure in terms of getting the perishable moving at the right temperature, whether it is two to eight degrees or ambient 15 to 25.

We make sure that the whole supply chain is managed very carefully. The other thing that is really important is, now we are considered a premium airline, which we are. So, we have to stand behind the badge. So, that means we operate at 99 per cent performance through our hub. We are one of the highest-performing international airlines in the world. And that should give all our customers in the whole of Africa, no matter where the airport is, confidence that when it moves from Africa through our hubs in Dubai and Phoenix and the rest of the world, the product integrity is maintained.

And that is the most important thing for us. The integrity of the product, quality of service, and just reassurance to our customers that stuff is moving on time. On-time performance, as I said earlier, is running at 99 per cent performance.

Who are some of your partners in Affrica  that facilitate your operations?

It is a great question. We use so many partners because I think your point on partners is fundamentally important. We at Emirates are as strong as our weakest link or as strong as our strongest partner; therefore, the partners we select across Africa are a range of different handling agents throughout Africa. We will build partnerships with them locally. We don’t set up our own infrastructure there. We rely on partners. And that is the way it works. But we will make sure that they have exactly the requirements that we need to handle the cargo. In some airports, you might only have one handler, but in most you have multiple. So, it is the job of our team to make sure that we choose the right handler for the type of commodity that we’re moving.

In terms of pandemics and emerging diseases, we saw COVID-19. There is currently Ebola in East Africa, right? There are also Marburg and other critical infections coming up. How are you prepared as an airline to make sure that these vaccines or pharmaceuticals get to the places where they are needed and on time?

We all know not too long ago, we had COVID-19 hit the entire world, which is a global pandemic. I think we learnt a lot from that. I think we underestimated how the world can come to its knees when you have a pandemic of the size that removes capacity and the free flow of commodities around the world.

We fortunately have invested a lot in infrastructure, which is my first point, infrastructure is important. Do you have the right infrastructure? You know, eight years ago, nine years ago, we spent $200m in Dubai on a pharma facility to make sure that the infrastructure is in place. And we had no idea that there was going to be an issue with the pandemic around the world, but we had the infrastructure prepared and built.

So, what we do is we prepare in terms of infrastructure, people, and training, which connects to SOPs (standards of operations). If you have those four components, that allows you to then deal with some of the difficulties effortlessly. Look at the recent constraints for the Suez Canal. So, let me address that question with an instance. When we were hit by a pandemic or anything, it might be Ebola; it might be any one of these cases.

It is the ability to react in a way that you can immediately provide an alternative solution that is expected, because you may not be able to provide the original solution you had in mind. We found an alternative solution. We created a multimodal solution.

For pharmaceuticals, we make it the absolute highest priority to get them on board. So, when key diseases happen and start, the pharma and the vaccines, or even the preventative medicine or the treatments, get the highest priority to get on that flight to get to that destination. And with Africa, with the reach that we have, if you look at COVID-19, we are the biggest mover of vaccines in the world, and predominantly the largest place we move vaccines to was Africa.

We made sure that we had the priority and the capacity to make sure we could get those vaccines here. And that goes for any particular type of ailment that happens, treatments, et cetera. It is all about the priority, making sure it can get on board.