News / Cargolux offloads stake in Champ CargoSystems to co-owner Sita

© Poohchisa Tunsiri

Champ CargoSystems, looking for a new owner for some time, has finally been wholly acquired by Sita, its 51% shareholder, following a sale by Cargolux.

Champ is now a wholly-owned Sita subsidiary, but CEO Chris McDermott will remain in his role.

Champ has floundered in recent years amid fierce competition in the market and fading interest from its original customer, Cargolux, which has chosen IBS as its main technology provider.

The Loadstar had understood that Sita was also looking at selling its stake, with several companies in the frame to take it over, but “Champ’s revenues have been increasing steadily as the air transport industry recovers”, said a Sita spokesperson.

“The purchase of the Champ minority share from Cargolux will simplify governance while providing the flexibility to leverage potential synergies with the broader Sita portfolio and customers.”

And Champ appears to have newfound confidence: last week it launched a market analytics service, providing daily insight into air cargo, using system integrations to get updates and allowing customers to adapt quickly to market changes. Managers can get customised alerts, and can see information organised by commodity or type of handling.

“Data is nothing without a powerful analytics platform to interpret it,” said Christopher Shawdon, head of business development at Champ. “Airlines and forwarders can use MarketAnalytics to connect, link, and evaluate data and insights faster in order to better serve their clients’ changing needs.”

The service is available to every airline and forwarder, whatever cargo system they operate, and will be expanded to additional supply chain stakeholders. 

Champ’s broad customer base includes mor than 200 airlines, GSAs and handlers and more than 3,000 forwarders.