Into Africa with O'Brien's Aergo

WHILE DENIS O’Brien was in Ireland on Wednesday, his Dublin-based aircraft leasing company Aergo Capital was holding a big bash in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to launch its latest operational base in Africa.

More than 150 guests gathered at Wilson airport for the launch, which was hosted by Aergo’s Irish chief executive Fred Browne, a long-time business associate of O’Brien and 15 per cent shareholder in the business.

Aergo expanded into Africa last December with the $80 million cash acquisition of Safair, a Johannesburg-based aircraft leasing and maintenance business. It is now using Safair as a launch pad into Kenya, where it will, initially, locate three aircraft (two Boeing 737-300s and a Hercules) . It also hopes to pick up contracts with the UN, the World Food Programme and Kenya Airways, which is part owned by Dutch airline KLM.

Safair is involved in both wet (where it rents both crew and aircraft) and dry (just the aircraft is involved) leasing and has a 28 per cent stake in an aircraft maintenance company beside Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo International Airport.

Its biggest customer is South African Airways, which leases a number of aircraft from the company. Other clients include Swords-based Air France subsidiary CityJet, KLM and parcel delivery group DHL.

Safair also carries out food drops for the UN in Africa and has delivered supplies to Antarctica using its Hercules aircraft.

Aergo now wants to develop another hub in Africa and is so keen to get started that it has piggybacked with a local company to get access to an air operator’s certificate, while it waits for its own to come through, which could take six months.

“There’s a lot of demand here [Kenya] and we want to capture that demand rather than wait six months,” Browne told me at the function in Nairobi. “We’d like to double the size of the business in the next 12 months.”

Browne and O’Brien briefly worked together at GPA, Tony Ryan’s Shannon-based aircraft leasing business, and launched Aergo in 1999.

Aergo also has a small presence in Santiago, Chile, that it plans to use as a launch pad into South America, and Browne also has an eye on the Middle East – Safair already has an aircraft based in Dubai.