AIRFREIGHT 2100 Inc. (Air21) plans to build more hubs on the outskirts of Metro Manila, addressing perceived increasing demand from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and online businesses in the provinces.
The freight and cargo business is surveying the outskirts of cities in the metropolis as it prepares to build mini-hubs by the end of the year. Each mini-hub will employ six to 10 trucks that will pierce through the heavy traffic clogging city streets in the National Capital Region (NCR).
“We have 10 locations in the pipeline to build on by the end of the year. The number of mini-hubs depends on the market size and delivery volume of each location,” Air21 Head of Retail Sales and Business Development Yasmin A. Vasquez told the BusinessMirror. “We’re just looking at the right spots and right space.”
According to Vasquez, the mini-hubs will serve as extensions of the firm’s warehouses in Metro Manila to transport the bulk of items to Quezon City.
Air21 picked the province of Rizal in the Calabarzon region as one of the initial sites to bring products by SMEs closer to the NCR. The Rizal mini-hub is set to open in October, she said.
Earlier this year Air21 opened its warehouse on Kalayaan Avenue in Quezon City and another in Muntinlupa City. It added two more in Parañaque City and one in Manila’s Pandacan district.
The expansion aims to promote products by SMEs in the provinces that have started venturing into e-commerce or online business.
Air21 sees more deliveries of small, local food and household items, especially dried fishes and fruits, cacao, coffee and walis tambo (soft brooms made from fibers of palm trees) to the NCR and foreign countries.
Vasquez said the firm’s clients have recently demanded more of these items that, she added, many consumers easily take for granted and forget to include in their to-buy lists. However, she said they are among the useful and unique products of the country.
“There’s a big market in the NCR, but what’s happening is a lot of products are going out [of] the NCR,” she explained. “But those coming in are ‘heavily selected’. Thus, small businesses tend to go to traders and public markets.”
According to Vasquez, Air21 is trying to show “that even a walis can be sold abroad”.
“But we’re trying to reach the corporate market in the NCR first.”
Since it first catered to a soft-broom supplier in Nueva Ecija a few years ago, Vasquez said Air21 has been receiving at least 200 orders of the item weekly from other suppliers.
At present Air21, together with an online store partner, is further evaluating the markets in the NCR for the profitability of the other local items, she added.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) expects, in particular, sales of cacao in domestic and foreign markets to increase by 40 percent in 2020.
Cacao growers in Calabarzon pledged on July 13 at the industry council meeting by the DTI to produce 2,000 metric tons of fermented beans by year 2022.
Last month the DTI also opened the 51st Negosyo Center in the province of Quezon to educate SMEs on business trends, especially e-commerce and registration process.
Thus, Air21 said the additional facilities will certainly help accommodate products of SMEs, which have grown from 20 percent last year to 38 percent this year. The DTI expects online businesses by SMEs to reach 100,000 by 2020.
