The GSE unveiled by SAHCO include cool dollies, pallet dollies, pushbacks, air conditioning units (ACUs), water and toilet bowsers. The three cool dollies, which can be described as mobile cold rooms were manufactured by Bombelli, has the capacity of taking a pallet or two AKE container loads of temperature sensitive shipments from the aircraft to the warehouse.
Furthermore, the cool dollies are equipped with an automatic electric powered engine that is environmentally friendly, and are fitted with data loggers to catalogue the pressure and temperature level of the compartment to protect its contents.
In addition, at the event two 45 tonnes Goldhofer pushbacks were commissioned. They can push back all wide body aircrafts except Airbus A380s. They are user friendly, and equipped with a Tier 4 engine.
Speaking at the unveiling, Basil Agboarumi, the Managing Director/CEO of SAHCO, said that the new equipment would be added to its arrays of facilities at the airport, explaining that SAHCO believed in continuous enhancement of facilities and would continue to invest in modern equipment in a bid to satisfy its clients, especially the airlines who he described as a very important segment of its business.
Agboarumi lauded the Board of Directors of SAHCO for giving its approval for the purchase of the equipment, but appealed to the Federal Government to also grant the ground handling companies customs duty waivers on the acquisition of equipment.
He said: “SAHCO is doing this because we believe in adding values to the environment, we operate in. Despite the current economic challenge in Nigeria, we are doing this at this time. These cool dollies are the first of its type in Nigeria. It can be used for the movement of perishable cargo from cold rooms to airlines and vice versa.
“We also have the pushbacks, the ACUs, water and toilet bowsers, which were fabricated by our engineers here in Nigeria. The world is going green and SAHCO as a company is also in compliance with reducing its carbon emissions."
