A new airport planned for the Cape Winelands aims to leverage fuel carriage savings and a projected surge in air cargo to position itself as an alternative to Cape Town International Airport.
Nicholas Ferguson, executive MD of RSA Aero and executive director of Cape Winelands Aero, told Business Times, sister publication of Business Day, this week that the Cape Town International Airport’s 120% recovery of pre-Covid-19 activity levels pointed to surging potential for the region’s aviation sector.
“Just by our existence, we will allow about another 110,000 tonnes of cargo to be carried into Cape Town International Airport, which allows the cargo market in Cape Town to double,” he said. “The weight saving will reduce the price of cargo, because if supply doubles and demand stays the same, the price will come down.”
Cape Winelands Airport, which gained momentum in 2024 and secured the location of a 3.5km runway, is expected to offer domestic and international flight options and open new routes, processing 2-million international tourists and 3-million domestic travellers annually by 2050.
Ferguson said the value proposition of the airport was supported by the strategic location and its potential for fuel carriage savings. The development’s internal team includes Investec and Waterborne Capital as financial advisers, Growthpoint as a strategic partner, Boogertman + Partners as designers, and WBHO as developers.
“The airport has a unique diversion model, where we share in value creation that we create just by our existence. That value creation is in the region of R1bn a year to the airline industry. It’s actually more, because that value is on the price of fuel, the exchange rate, and the value of cargo.
“Now with the price of fuel, exchange rate, and value of cargo, you’ll find that it is closer to R1.5bn. If you take R1.5bn and capitalise that … every year into perpetuity, you are probably talking about R15bn to R20bn to the industry effectively as a capitalised value from day one.”
He said new passengers would be people who live closer to the new airport than Cape Town International Airport. He said passengers tend to go to airports that offer direct routes to their destination, and there is not necessarily a clash.
He said Cape Town International and Cape Winelands could complement each other, noting that Heathrow and Gatwick are two of the biggest airports in London but serve different clients, with Heathrow doing long hauls to New York, while Gatwick, which does 40-million passengers, specialises in short flights to smaller cities in Europe.
That forecast saw Cape Town going from 11-million passengers currently. It just recently broke its record for the most number of passengers coming into Cape Town. That 11-million in the Naco forecast will grow to just more than 22-million by 2050.
— Nicholas Ferguson, executive MD of RSA Aero
“We will have a mix of domestic and international, obviously depending on our international licence, which is key to us. We will have 25% of the market. And what happens is that cargo is actually carried in the belly of passenger planes. So, our cargo is effectively controlled by plane size and the routes they fly. So, if they are flying in routes that align with cargo needs, we will fulfil that cargo need.”
He said the path to developing the airport also involves getting approvals, including stakeholder approval and administrative authorisation from the Western Cape provincial government. The airport also needs a licence to operate as an international airport, which is also pending.
He said two studies were done, including one by the Netherlands Airport Consultancy Organisation (Naco), which showed a promising future for aviation in the Western Cape region, with record-breaking growth in airport activity.
“That forecast saw Cape Town going from 11-million passengers currently. It just recently broke its record for the most number of passengers coming into Cape Town. That 11-million in the Naco forecast will grow to just more than 22-million by 2050.
“We would go from naught to 5-million, broadly having 25% of the passengers in the market, and Cape Town International would go from 11-million to 16-million. So, we would have 25% of the passengers, but one in every two new passengers would come to us.”
While the airport is looking to get its foothold through growing cargo carriage and fuel carriage savings, the tourism sector believes its potential to feed the growing demand for travel in the region is apparent.
David Frost, CEO of the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, said that the development of the airport would become a boost for the Cape region and the country.
“It would be a massive boost. It adds another conduit for coming in. A lot of the overseas carriers have to carry extra fuel. So, if there’s fog in Cape Town, they’ve got enough to get up to Joburg and everything else, so that just pushes our costs up. But if you’ve got another airport [in the Cape] that you can land in, they don’t have to do that.”
Frost said tourism in the Cape has been heavily concentrated in Cape Town, and an airport in the Winelands would deepen tourism activity across the broader region.
Speaking at Africa Travel Week in Cape Town, Kwakye Donko, CEO of Africa Tourism Partners, said the recovery of the tourism sector on the continent from the Covid-19 lockdown is a missed opportunity to strengthen intra-African tourism and travel.
“There are a lot of opportunities, and sometimes we are our own worst enemies on this continent…. Every trip that a group of ministers or business leaders in Africa needs to take can be done here. Cape Town, Nairobi, Accra and Lagos all have fantastic facilities. So, there is a lot of opportunity to grow this into the biggest tourism and business travel industry.”
Frost said while travel from Europe to Cape Town is strong, some in the sector suspect that travel figures from the US are overstated, as many of these travellers are travelling to other parts of Southern Africa from Cape Town.
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