• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

NAHCO envisages increased growth as firm implements five-year transition plan

NAHCO envisages increased growth as firm implements five-year transition plan

The Nigerian Aviation Handling Company (NAHCO) PLC has said that it expects year to year growth and consolidation as it continues to implement its five-year transition plan.

This is just as the handling company revealed some strategies it has employed to reduce, to its barest minimal, the airside incidents that may cost the company millions.

Tokunbo Fagbemi, Group Managing Director of NAHCO PLC, who made these revelations at the Gateway Forum organized by the League of Airports and Aviation Correspondents (LAAC) said the five-year plan which began this year and is expected to run till 2023 will put the company in a better footing than it was met.

According to her, as part of that growth plan, the company has invested at least two billion naira in the acquisition of ground handling equipment as part of the first phase of its investment plans.

She further explained that company has commenced the second phase of the exercise and hoped to improve on its equipment acquisition to further cement its position as a leader in the sub-sector.

Fagbemi said,” We have a five-year plan which started this year and will end in 2023 and we just started the first year. This year it’s been more of investment and putting things in place. Next year, we believe that we would be able to show some more growth, it’s not that we won’t have growth this year but next year we would also consolidate and by year three we should be able to really show the growth.

“But what we believe year by year, month by month we should be able to show we are on that path. And so we’ve been able to reduce some of our operating costs by being more efficient in what we do.”

Read also: Fraud allegation: United States District Court issues warrant of arrest against AirPeace CEO

The NAHCO GMD also hinted that the company was in a series of meetings to enable them tinker the price of cargo as it was currently very low.

“We have our challenging moments because right now we are trying to increase our price of cargo because we have invested a lot and we are working with the agents to ensure we arrive at something beneficial mostly for the shippers and concessionaires who are the people we provide that service to.

“So we have a direct agreement with the airlines and the airlines have an agreement with the consignees and shippers but it’s important that we are able to fulfill what is on the contract with the airline and the airlines also have the shippers and consignees. And we are trying to ensure that in terms of operations things are done according to operational standard and with the support of stakeholders like customs we are seeing those things happen.

On its plans to avoid air side incidents, Fagbemi said there were not only constant talks and training but that the company has enforced certain standards to ensure that the staff do what is right basically all the time.

“One of the things we do is that we have pep talks so every morning there is talk on safety. We have a way we train our people and its daily. There are trainings done daily, there are trainings done weekly, there are trainings done monthly; there are trainings done yearly and everybody does their training and if you are not trained on an equipment, you are not allowed to go on that equipment and those rules are enforced and our standards units are on ground, viewing the operations 24/7 and their job is just to ensure that the quality control is in place and we don’t joke with that.

“We also have audits, where we do self-audits, we go and see an airline for example and ask them what are the challenges and the airlines themselves audit us. So we audit ourselves, the airline audits us and we are very strict if anyone breaches even the simplest of procedures, we don’t joke with them.

“If you breach a small procedure and nothing is done, you will do something bigger and that’s what we are doing and everyone (the whole team) works together because everyone realizes that if something does happen, the company is going to pay, if the company pays, it takes out part of whatever all of us are going to earn as performance bonus, so that is also helping because we all want the company to do well so from top to bottom everybody enjoys. Everybody watches the next person in addition to our quality team watching everything,” she said.