Handler and ground services company Swissport International has opened a warehouse for temperature-controlled pharma at Dublin Airport.
It says the 400 sq m facility is the first of its size at the Irish capital’s airport. The new cold storeroom is fully dedicated to pharmaceuticals, and can hold up to 200 pallets.
The facility has been built in partnership with Celtic Cooling and operates between 15 to 25°C. It has been sensitively designed to minimise environmental impact by using cooling technology that relies on propane gas – compared to other refrigerants, propane has a very low global warming potential. The warehouse also has an additional unit capable of operating at 2-8° C.
Bournemouth Airport on Britain’s South Coast is now host to the UK largest non-integrator freighter fleets – and will be by a considerable margin when current business plans are realised at the end of 2024.
Local carrier European Cargo has a fleet of 12 Airbus A340-6000 aircraft, either of them currently based at Bournemouth. It has been converting its fleet to full freighters using a unique main deck cargo pod system; three are now currently operational, six modified aircraft will be operational by the end of the year and ten by the end of 2024.
The aircraft were originally in the Iberian and Virgin passenger fleets. They were tailor-made for long, high routes in hot climates but are almost equally at home on short intra-Continental hops, says European Cargo chief executive, David Kerr. Reputedly the longest aircraft in the world (some sources suggest the Boeing 747-8 just pips it by three feet), each aircraft offers a maximum payload of 76 tonnes or 440cu m.
Some of the fleet have already been in cargo service, moving PPE and other essentials from China to Bournemouth during the Covid pandemic under the special dispensations that allowed unmodified passenger upper decks to be used to carry cargo.
Now, however, the aircraft are being fully modified with 39 fixed fire-retardant pods on the upper deck. At 237cu m, this capacity will be aimed at e-commerce and similar light goods while the lower decks will be used for denser cargo.
Cargo on the upper deck will be loose-loaded but special equipment such as moveable roller-beds will speed the process and the aircraft will offer quick turnarounds, says David Kerr.
While the conversion is thorough, the ex-Virgin aircraft still display some signs of their heritage – the on-board nail bar and the odd bit of diamante décor on the bulkhead. More importantly, some of Virgin’s crews transferred with the aircraft to European Cargo and have remained there.
As well as its operational advantages, the A340-600 was selected because they are relatively young aircraft and the cost of conversion relatively low, says Kerr.
The plains will operate under a mix of UK and Maltese licences to maximise traffic rights.
Potential routes include services from China to Europe – already being operated – to and from North America and, salmon from Norway worldwide.
Bournemouth Airport is owned by Regional and City Airports (RCA) Group and freight operations are handled by its Cargo First arm, which offers a complete service including handling and trucking. Cargo First’s head of cargo development Bob Matharoo brings 25 years’ industry experience, including a nine-year spell at BMI Cargo.
RCA also owns Coventry, Exeter and Norwich airports but Bournemouth is its main cargo hub. It can offer freedom from the congestion of other major south-east hubs while at the same time, it says, it is just 90 minutes by road from London (2½ hours might be a more reasonable estimate for a truck to Heathrow). It is also one of the few UK airports with capacity to handle significant numbers of freighters; East Midlands is very busy these days, Stansted is virtually full, while Manston and Robin Hood have closed).
Maersk is increasing frequency and introducing additional aircraft on its freighter flights between China, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the US.
It will double weekly rotations from three to six between Chicago Rockford and Hangzhou Xiaoshan in China and from two to three between Greenville-Spartanburg in South Carolina, Incheon in Korea and Shenyang Taoxian in China.
The service between Billund Denmark and Hangzhou will increase from three to five weekly and will receive a newly converted Boeing 767 freighter, operated by Maersk Air Cargo, the company’s in-house cargo airline. It is the fifth and order for six such aircraft.
Maersk recently opened a new Chicago air freight gateway for customers using Chicago O’Hare International and Rockford International.
On the eve of World Refugee Day and as Europe faces its largest refugee crisis since World War II Menzies Aviation has commited to employ 150 Ukrainian refugee women and others at the Tent European Business Summit in Paris. The event was organised by the Tent Partnership for Refugees (Tent), a global network of more than 300 companies committed to supporting the economic integration of refugees. Menzies Aviation, the leading service partner to the world’s airports and airlines, joins dozens of major employers including Accenture, Adecco, Amazon, Genrali, Marriot International, Microsoft and Teleperformance in pledging to provide jobs and training to tens of thousands of refugees across Europe over the next three years. Collectively, this is the most significant set of business commitments ever made to advance the economic integration of refugees. As well as hiring 150 refugees in Europe, Menzies has set an overall goal of recruiting refugees equivalent to 1% of its global workforce over the next three years. It has also committed to providing training and support, including local language lessons, for all new refugee recruits. Since the war in Ukraine, Menzies has hired 20 Ukrainian refugees in Europe and, more recently, in Montreal, Canada, reaching out to Ukrainian aviation services companies to offer employment to people fleeing the country.
Pictured: Menzies Aviation chief people officer, Juliet Thomson, with head of sustainability Katy Reid at the Tent Summit in Paris
Lufthansa Cargo will permanently switch its B777 freighter flights from Mexico City International Airport to Felipe Ángeles International Airport from 7 July.
It follows a decree by the Mexican government prohibiting airlines from flying freighters to Mexico City Airport for capacity reasons.
Felipe Ángeles Airport is about 45 km northeast of Mexico City and has been in operation since last year, located on the site of a former military airfield.
Lufthansa Cargo is offering a total of six freighter connections from Frankfurt with Boeing 777F in its current summer flight schedule. It also offers belly cargo to Mexico City on seven weekly flights from Frankfurt with the Boeing 747-8 as well as three weekly Airbus A350 connections from Munich. Lufthansa Cargo is operating truck shuttle services between the two airports.
Emirates SkyCargo has enhanced its interline cooperation with Air Canada. Emirates customers can now book shipments on Air Canada Cargo flights on an interline basis via e-SkyCargo, WebCargo, and Cargowise. Air Canada Cargo is working to implement similar direct booking capabilities on Emirates flights in the coming weeks.
Emirates Skycargo’s divisional senior vice president, Nabil Sultan, said: “This arrangement with Air Canada will benefit many of our customers, particularly those in West Asia, Middle East and Africa seeking to transport agricultural equipment, machinery, aircraft parts, as well as perishables and general cargo into Canada and other points in North America.”
This latest development follows the memorandum of understanding signed in February between the two airlines to provide more benefits to their air freight customers and builds on the broader strategic commercial partnership between Emirates and Air Canada, announced last year.
The partnership expands Emirates SkyCargo’s reach to over 60 cities in Canada and more than 150 cities across five continents through Air Canada Cargo’s fleet of Boeing 767 freighters and the belly-hold capacity of Air Canada’s scheduled passenger flights. In return, Air Canada Cargo has access to Emirates SkyCargo’s network through the belly-hold of its scheduled passenger flights to over 150 destinations, as well as the capacity of the 11 freighters currently in the Emirates fleet.
IAG Cargo has appointed Jordan Kohlbeck as head of pharmaceutical. He will assume the responsibility of overseeing IAG Cargo’s temperature control pharmaceutical product and set the vision and strategic direction of its pharmaceutical and life sciences division. He will also manage IAG Cargo’s Constant Climate product. Since joining IAG Cargo over three years ago, he has held roles relating to constant climate and transformation, where he helped deliver and drive change within IAG Cargo’s Operations and wider business.
DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist of Deutsche Post DHL Group, and IAG Cargo have signed a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) partnership. DHL has signed a contract to purchase 11.5 million liters of SAF Scope 3 transport emissions reductions in 2023. The SAF, certified by International Sustainability & Carbon Certification (ISCC) and produced from used cooking oil and food waste, has at least 80% lower lifecycle emissions than conventional jet fuel.
Pictured left to right: Kathrin Brost, Global Head of GoGreen, DHL Global Forwarding; Simon Holt, Manager Emerging Energy Europe, Phillips 66; David Rose, IAG Cargo Director of London Operation; Koji Miyazaki, IAG Cargo Global Key Account Manager.
Royal Schiphol Group, owner of the Netherlands’ main cargo gateway, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport has finalized a deal to purchase a 40% stake in Maastricht Aachen Airport in the south of the country, becoming the second shareholder alongside the province of Limburg.
Officially signed on 8 June, the €4.2 million investment will see Maastricht Aachen Airport join Royal Schiphol Group.
“Maastricht Aachen Airport is the second largest cargo airport in the Netherlands and makes a significant economic contribution to the country,” said Schiphol head of cargo, Joost van Doesburg.
“Both Schiphol and Maastricht recognize the importance of cargo, valuable freighter slots and good connectivity with the rest of the world. This collaboration will add value for our cargo partners at both airports, as we strive towards innovation, efficiency and sustainability.”
The two hubs will share market intelligence and freight data and develop innovations in cargo transport and handling. Maastricht could also be an ideal testing ground for key priorities such as sustainable aviation.
“Partnering with Schiphol will boost market confidence, and the benefits will be passed on to our cargo customers through our improved speed, and capacity,” said Maastrict Airport chief executive, Jos Roeven. “Freight is vital to our national economy, so this is a key moment not only for the Dutch cargo community, but also the Netherlands at large.”
The two airports will also share resources in strategy, real-estate, commerce, and maintenance.
Maastricht recently announced its plan to increase its freighter capacity by extending the operational length of its upgraded runway to 2,750 meters by 2025.
(Pictured: Royal Schiphol Group chief financial officer Robert Carsouw (left) with Limburg economy delegate, Stephan Satijn.)
Tension is mounting in the global air cargo market heading into the weaker summer months, says analyst Clive Data Services, part of Xeneta.
It warns that general airfreight rates fell in May to their lowest level since March 2020 as restless airlines and freight forwarders went in search of volumes.
The global airfreight spot rate fell 40% in May from a year earlier, reaching its lowest in over three years of US$2.41 per kg, just days after IATA predicted airline cargo revenues and yields could fall by more than 31% and 29% respectively in 2023.
Softening global air cargo demand saw a less severe year-over-year drop of -1% in chargeable weight in May, the smallest monthly decline in the past 12 months, but the influx of belly capacity for the peak summer leisure travel market applied more downward pressure on rates. Global air cargo capacity in May continued its double-digit increase, up 14% year-on-year.
Less demand and more capacity led to an inevitable fall in dynamic loadfactor, CLIVE’s measurement of global volume and weight perspectives of cargo flown and capacity available. It was -5% pts lower vs. May 2022 at 55%.
Xeneta chief airfreight officer, Niall van de Wouw, said it’s not only rising capacity which is causing restlessness: “There are a lot of ambitious forwarders in the market that want to grow – but they cannot grow with their current customer bases because the airfreight demand is not there, so, as we highlighted in April, they are looking to take a bigger share from someone else.
“At the same time, we see a lot of shippers going to market now because they want to refresh their rates and benefit from the different conditions to 3-6 months ago. Challengers for their business – not the incumbent freight forwarders – smell a chance to buy volumes and are going in and offering low rates. And, whether they get the business or not, the overall rates drop because shippers often stick with their current provider but expect them to adjust their rates accordingly to this lower market level.”
He added: “In my conversations with airlines and forwarders in mid-May, I heard the market was slow, but there was no panic. But the overall market sentiment seems to be changing. Now, more airlines and forwarders are clearly getting nervous, are accepting the fact that hopes of an uptick in peak season demand later in the year are dwindling.”
