India Cargo Awards 2023 held in New Delhi on July 24 honored and appreciated the hard work of the ‘Heroes’ of the Indian Air Cargo and Logistics fraternity. Known as the “Oscars of the Cargo Industry,” the India Cargo Awards 2023, hosted by Cargo Talk (DDP Group Publication) served as an all-India platform created with a vision to recognise excellence in the Cargo-Freight-Logistics Industry across various domains, including Rail, Road, Air, Sea, Allied Services, Warehousing, Technology, 3rd Party Logistics, and more. Piyush Srivastava, IES, Senior Economic Advisor, Union Ministry of Civil Aviation, graced the occasion as the Chief Guest.

Devang Vyas, Global Logistics Head, Glenmarks Pharmaceuticals says, “As an industry we need to focus on having sufficient raw materials, creating more training and awareness, addressing the shortage of skilled manpower and we need to adhere to strict safety protocols to ensure quality of pharma being manufactured. Pharma is the only industry which involves lot of regulatory procedures to set high benchmark. India has been supplying the pharmaceuticals across the global since last many years and was known as pharma hub of the world, but now its changing to – India becoming pharmacy of the world.”

Bharat Bhushan Rathi, Head – Distribution and Logistics, Mankind Pharma says, “Technological integration is very crucial to maintain the integrity, resiliency and agility of not only the pharma supply chain but also of the entire logistics business. Govt is taking various initiatives to boost the tech adoption in pharma manufacturing but the industry should also play its part. With that cost-effectiveness and quality of the products throughout the supply chain also hold utmost importance. It’s just not sasta, sundar and tikau, we cannot compromise with the quality of pharmaceuticals. Especially as we are talking about pharma e-commerce from India so, quality, tima and cost should be taken into consideration.”

Tushar Jani, Group Chairman, Cargo Service Center, while attending pharma Digital Conclave organised by Cargo Talk on July 21st says, “If you look at one trillion target of merchant exports, it is 57 billion which comes from pharma alone, that’s a great news. The only challenge is API for which we are dependent on China and we have to figure out how we can become self-sufficient. Our second innovation comes in terms of packing material, we need to make more sustainable packing material, India should take the lead in developing packing material to remove the dry ice which is actually against the environmental issue. Third, we need to develop an eco-system for pharma e-commerce for transportation of generic drugs out of India, for this we have distribution centres across the globe – in US, Europe, Far East, Africa and in many other countries but we need to expand our global reach and presence. India should become global pharma e-commerce leader, it will have great market penetration so that’s the ultimate goal. To achieve the global market share of generic drugs from current 20% to 40 %, India should consider above points. If we have this in place, we can achieve the said target in 7 years. The only concern is high Freight rates. We have great cold storage infrastructure for handling and transporting temperature-sensitive products, we have skilled manpower, over thousand scientists manufacturing drugs, great R&D by govt and private players. We need to address raw material availability and reduced dependence on China for API.”

Murali Krishna, Director, Pharmexcil says, “In India, we have required resources, infrastructure and capabilities, but when it comes to raw materials, the dependence on other countries for raw material is up to 60% to 70%. Majority of raw material comes from China and some special chemicals from South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. During COVID-19 pandemic, India proved its capabilities as it produced two most effective vaccines like Covaxin and Covishield in huge quantities and supplied it worldwide. During FY2022-FY2023, we have touched $25 million, around 3.5 per cent growth in this sector. These are very important figures for the Indian pharma sector. Almost 5.6% of merchandise trade is from the pharma sector also its third largest Indian exports commodity.”

Get ready to be part of very interesting and insightful third Pharma Digital Conclave being organised by Cargo Talk in collaboration with Cargo Service Center (CSC) today at 11am to 12 Noon. The digital conclave on ‘How India can increase generic drugs global market share from 20% to 40%?’ Will have Mr. Tushar Jani, Group Chairman, Cargo service Center, Mr. Murali Krishna, Director, Pharmexcil, Mr. Devang Vyas, Global Logistics Head, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals and Mr. Bharat Bhushan Rathi, Head Distribution and Logistics, Mankind Pharma on the panel. The session will be moderated by Mr Sanjeet, CEO, DDP Group.

Menzies Aviation has expanded its presence in the Balkans by agreeing to buy a majority stake in Cargo Handling Services (CHS) at Sofia International Airport (SOF) in Bulgaria. The joint venture increases Menzies Aviation’s footprint in Europe to 50 airports in 17 countries, says an official release. Established in 2016, CHS provides a range of cargo services at SOF including warehousing, import and export handling, mail handling and temperature-controlled storage, the release said. “CHS will benefit from being part of Menzies’ global network and will transition to the Menzies brand and its best-in-class standards and systems.” “CHS is a well-regarded cargo provider at Sofia Airport, which has potential for significant growth,” says Miguel Gomez Sjunnesson, Executive Vice President, Europe, Menzies Aviation. “Strategically, this investment supports our ambitions to accelerate growth by expanding our air cargo business and entering emerging aviation markets. We’re looking forward to working with our new partners, and, in the long-term, increasing our market share at Sofia Airport.”

Maersk has inaugurated a new airfreight gateway near Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport (ATL) as it continues to build its US airfreight business. The 123,000 sq ft site will act as a forward staging facility for Maersk Air Cargo’s Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport own controlled flight operations – from which it operates five Boeing 747 freighter return flights per week to Hahn, Germany, and two 767F flights per week to Shenyang, China, with onward connection to Seoul, Korea. The Atlanta facility further builds Maersk’s airfreight services in North America. The company recently opened a new Chicago airfreight gateway facility to add more supply chain integration opportunities for customers using Chicago O’Hare International and Rockford International, says release.

The decline in global air cargo volumes eased again in June but the ‘fear-of-missing-out (FOMO)’ created an irrational airline and freight forwarding market as shippers indulged in a 41% year-on-year fall in the general airfreight spot rate, shows the latest weekly data from industry analysts, CLIVE Data Services, part of Xeneta. Air cargo capacity rose 8% year-over-year in June but despite this surge in availability, the drop in global chargeable weight stayed at -1%, repeating the market performance seen in May. However, the -41% fall in the market average took the global air cargo spot rate down to US$2.31 per kg. Niall van de Wouw, Chief Airfreight Officer at Xeneta, said June’s air cargo data demonstrates the jumpiness in the market. “The surprise in June is the difference between the sentiment in the market and what the actual data is showing us. It is getting pretty nasty out there and stress levels among airlines and forwarders are clearly rising, but we see a clear distinction between market sentiment and market fundamentals and sentiment is more negative right now. “Airlines and forwarders are getting jumpy because of falling rates, not so much the volumes. It’s the fear-of-missing-out that is driving the aggressive drop in cargo rates because no one wants to lose volumes, and they also want to get more of the cargo that’s in the market. We can see forwarders taking big risks,” he said.

To cater to our growth and future demand, we are investing in a brand new, state-of-the-art Cargo Terminal 2 with an additional capacity of 3.4 million tonnes, says Liesbeth Oudkerk, Senior Vice President, Cargo Sales and Network Planning, Qatar Airways in an exclusive chat. This cargo facility of the future will be a safe, smart, and green facility relying heavily on technology and automation for its material handling. It will offer faster storage and retrieval and cargo processing, enabling us to offer shorter connection for the growing demand of transit cargo. This building will be built on LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating framework, which is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. Available for virtually all building types, LEED provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings.