Category Archives: International

Austrian Airlines has announced that it is ending its preighter operation after 15 months. The Lufthansa Group-owned airline’s long-haul passenger aircraft have regularly operated as freighter-only aircraft between Asia and Europe since March last year. Two B777s (OE-LPA and OE-LPC) even had their seats removed to boost cargo capacity and acted as the “backbone” of the operation. OE-LPA will be the last of the two aircraft to have its seats replaced and from July the aircraft will resume passenger flights to North America, among other destinations. “On 159 flights, we transported 4,500 tons of relief supplies to Europe in the fight against the pandemic,” the carrier said. “The cargo included 200m protective masks, 30m test kits and more than 15m medical gloves. We flew the goods to Austria, but also to Germany and Italy.”

Air cargo booking platform Webcargo has launched a new tool that allows forwarders to offer customers online booking on their own website. WebCargo Vista provides forwarders with a branded sales portal that is connected directly to their rate management systems and that can then be offered customers an online booking option. The company explained that research it had recently conducted showed that only 25%of top freight forwarders currently offer accessible online booking to their customers. “WebCargo Vista is unique in its combination of multimodal rate management with a leading pricing, booking and management platform, enabling over 90% of customer bookings to be conducted without a phone call or email,” it said.

Freight forwarder Crane Worldwide Logistics will in July launch charter flights between China and the US to combat ongoing issues in ocean shipping and tight capacity in air cargo. The service will launch on July 2 using B747-400 freighter capacity between Shanghai and Rickenbacker International Airport, leaving on Fridays and arriving on Saturdays. Crane’s chief sales officer Tim Zubradt explained that it had selected Rickenbacker due to the close proximity to the company’s Columbus warehouse and a one-day truck drive to major cities such as Chicago, New York and Washington. He also pointed out that there was congestion at many major US hubs, with Rickenbacker serving as an alternative US hub for incoming cargo. The service is launched as the ocean shipping industry continues to struggle with delays and reliability issues.

Qatar Airways Cargo announces the approval of Envirotainer’s latest innovation – The Releye® RLP container. With the newest addition to its range of temperature-controlled containers, the airline now offers 16 temperature-controlled container leasing options for life science and health care products to maintain a secure and seamless cool chain. It has been already offering customers Envirotainer’s RAP and RKN active pharma containers since 2014. Guillaume Halleux, Chief Officer Cargo at Qatar Airways said, “We are committed to provide our customers the best solutions. A seamless cool chain is paramount to maintain the efficacy of pharmaceuticals and we are pleased to offer our customers a technologically advanced container – Releye® RLP with live monitoring and intelligent cargo protection to transport their critical life science and health care shipments at the required temperature across our global network. Such an innovation is the need of the hour, especially in these uncertain times of the pandemic.”

DSV Panalpina is poised to become the world’s largest freight forwarder in terms of air and ocean revenues provided that its proposed takeover of Agility GIL is completed, reveals a new analysis from Transport Intelligence (Ti). “With the deal set to be completed in the second half of 2021, the stage is set for changes at the top of the ranking”, reveals Ti’s recently published Global Freight Forwarding Market 2021 With a revenue of €9.9bn, DSV Panalpina is ranked third as per the analysis. Kuehne + Nagel (KN) is the current market leader, with combined revenues of €11.5bn, followed by DHL Global Forwarding, with €10.9bn. Agility is ranked 12th with revenues of €2.8bn. “GIL’s €2.8bn revenues would see DSV Panalpina displace both KN and DHL GF”, the report said.

The urban air mobility pioneer Volocopter and global logistics service provider DB Schenker are developing solutions for the fast and emission-free transport of goods. Today, Volocopter’s heavy-lift drone was presented to German federal politicians for the first time. At the National Aviation Conference (Nationale Luftfahrtkonferenz) at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, numerous politicians and representatives from the aviation industry visited the VoloDrone. The aircraft is autonomously and electrically operated and can transport up to 200 kilograms of cargo with a range of up to 40 kilometers. Jochen Thewes, CEO of DB Schenker: “Our customers demand clean, fast and innovative solutions for their supply chains. When the infrastructure for conventional means of transport is overburdened or non-existent, cargo drones offer an opportunity to rethink logistics routes. The possible applications in logistics are limitless. Through our partnership with Volocopter, this vision is gradually becoming reality. Drone transport is becoming increasingly tangible. The National Aviation Conference in Berlin offers us a very good opportunity to give German politicians a live impression of this.”

Cathay Pacific Cargo has added to its extensive cool-chain options for customers by being the first Asian air-cargo carrier to offer the Envirotainer Releye® RLP for carriage on its aircraft fleet. The Envirotainer Releye® RLP is available across four ports in South Asia, including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Dhaka and Colombo. The Envirotainer Releye® RLP is an LD11-sized unit with a unique air flow technology for maximum temperature stability, and has been designed to meet shippers’ requests for greater load flexibility. The RLP-size container fits three Euro pallets (or two-US pallets) and fills a strategic gap between the larger RAP and smaller RKN-size containers to enable mixing and matching of pallet sizes based on shipment volume. The unit uses rechargeable batteries to power its electric heating and compressor cooling system, which can be controlled from an external panel. A single battery charge will power the system for more than 170 hours. The Releye® RLP also offers fully integrated live monitoring.

DHL Global Forwarding maintained its position as the leading airfreight forwarder last year despite volumes dropping, while Kuehne+Nagel (K+N) looks set to nab the top spot in the coming years and DSV Panalpina continues its rapid rise up. The latest annual market figures from consultant Armstrong & Associates highlight the level of volatility registered in the air cargo market last year, with dramatic variances in performance. The overall decline in volumes for the top 25 players reflects the Covid-19 outbreak that saw much of the world’s airlines ground their fleets as passenger travel ground to a halt and lockdowns constrained consumer spending. For market leader DHL Global Forwarding, like many of its peers, 2020 was a tough year in terms of air volumes as a result of the pandemic, although it was a different story for revenues and profits. The Bonn-headquartered company saw its airfreight volumes decline by 12.1% year on year to 1.7m tonnes.

The global Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of refrigerated container logistics to keep vital supplies of food and medicines, including vaccines, flowing around the world as nations locked down. While temperature-controlled goods have indeed kept flowing, the pandemic triggered an ongoing cascade of disruptions to the bigger container shipping system that so many perishable producers, exporters, importers and supply chains now rely on. That includes delayed, diverted and rolled shipments, port congestion, landside logjams and shortages and displacement of empty reefer containers due to a clogged global maritime transport pipeline. Real-time visibility and remote control are key drivers for today’s accelerated digitalisation in reefer container operations and the broader cold chain, not only because of the huge global vaccine distribution challenge but perhaps even more so to manage supply chain delays and disruptions impacting cross-border flows of food and other perishables.

India had been adversely hit by the second wave of the covid pandemic and there has been severe shortage of equipment, beds, healthcare workers, vaccines, oxygen and drugs. Air Logistics Group has contributed to international efforts towards Covid relief by donating medical grade 5 litre Oxygen concentrators to help the Covid patients in India. These concentrators were imported by Air Logistics Group (India) from the UK through its East Midlands office during the height of the second wave in New Delhi to support the needy during these crisis. This is not the first time Air Logistics Group (India) has donated medical equipment. Last year prior to the pandemic they also donated Dialysis machines to serve society . “Every drop – small or big counts in such crucial times when people are struggling for survival”, remarked Vikramjit Singh Ahluwalia, MD in India, following the donation.