Lobtrans gears for Air Botswana bid
Lobtrans (Pty) Ltd, the only local suitor for a strategic partnership in Air Botswana’s (AB) privatisation says it is ready to turn around the national airliner if it can beat seven other competitors.
The Lobatse-based company is part of the Asmal Group, whose Chief Executive Officer, Sam Asmal told Mmegi this week that they are ready to improve the fortunes of Air Botswana and make it a regional and profitable outfit. They are bidding for a stake in Air Botswana through one of their companies called LOBAIR.
“We have got the experience and the expertise to run the airline and make it profitable. We know safety standards and maintenance,” Asmal said.
At the time of the interview Air Botswana had not yet furnished his company with database on its performance, but he was confident that it would make profit if it opened as many regional routes as possible. “If someone wants to travel from Lusaka to Gaborone they have to fly to Johannesburg first so that they can fly here. This could be addressed by opening a direct route from Gaborone to Lusaka,” Asmal said.
He pointed out that Botswana has the advantage of its geographic location in the centre of the SADC region. He said he has noticed that AB had not been competing enough because South African Express dominates the route between Gaborone and Johannesburg.
The fleet for the tiny airliner is extremely non-economical and is occasionally grounded because of poor maintenance, he said. He added that the route between the two cities needs more flights. With close to 300 tankers transporting fuel to SADC countries and experience in aviation industry, Asmal said that his company intends to localise all engineering and technical jobs to create employment for Batswana when it takes over Air Botswana.
“Everything will be done here and we are going to provide full training of locals,” he said. The Asmal Group has close to 600 employees and has offices in Durban, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Gaborone, Francistown and the headquarters in Lobatse. It services all SADC countries except Angola. Lobtrans, which surprised the market when its bid was announced is competing with six firms - Comair, SA Airlink, SA Inter Air, African World Airways, Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise, and Switzerland based Execujet.
A recent report by South African Business Day newspaper shows that Comair is listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and operates British Airways and Kulula.com in South Africa. On the other hand, SA Airlink services smaller towns in South Africa and Swaziland, the newspaper said.
The paper quoted SA Airlink CEO Roger Forster as saying that AB has interesting opportunities in the region while Comair spokesman Stuart Cochrane said that they would like to expand into Africa if they take over AB.
Public Enterprises Evaluation Privatisation Agency (PEEPA) CEO Joshua Galeforolwe said that the next step will be to have a bidders conference sometimes next month and thereafter the bidders could present their tender documents.