News / Ecommerce and air cargo: it's booming – 'like water, it will find its way'

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You can raise barriers, add taxes, slow down deliveries. But you cannot stop the flow or pace of growth of ecommerce. 

Data gathered over this year shows that ecommerce has continued to thrive despite regulatory and cost barriers.  

“It was less than 1m tons when Covid hit us,” explained Marco Bloemen, CEO of Aevean. “We’ve been growing to a level that was 4 .7m tons in 2024; and this year by August, we hit numbers that exceeded the last full year.” 

Source: Aevean

According to Rotate, ecommerce involving Europe was up 62%, or 200,000 tonnes – more than the combined decline of ecommerce and non-ecommerce into the US from China. 

Source: Rotate

But it wasn’t just Europe that led this drive in demand. 

“Commerce is like water in a stream – it comes up against a rock and works its way around. That’s exactly what we’ve seen trade do this year,” said Martin Drew, chief strategy and transformation officer at Atlas Air, speaking at Tiaca’s ACF in Abu Dhabi last week. 

Noting that the removal of de minimis in the US was “a massive shock”, he added: “It was just phenomenal to see the way that the large Chinese ecommerce platforms reacted, and the power of their digital marketing. So we saw demand from China–US coming up at about 43% [lower], effectively overnight. But what was fascinating to see is that product was just redirected to other markets. 

Source: Aevean

“We saw a huge growth for Latin America in particular, as well of course as Europe, Middle East. and other points.  

“Redirecting all that capacity was a huge undertaking. I mean, we effectively shifted about 30% of our network within a matter of days. But not only did we see them ramp up existing markets, where they redirected that volume, but also creating new markets overnight.

“So, as an example, we’re now operating three times a week from China to Lima, a market that they just seemed to create overnight.” 

So, how did Chinese platforms pivot so fast to drive demand elsewhere? 

Mr Bloemen said it was worth noting the number of ecommerce app downloads and their usage. 

“If you look at the monthly usage of Shein versus the flows we see in our database, it’s scary that there’s a 97% correlation, a direct link between Shein monthly usage and the flows we see flying from China into those countries.” 

The Shein app was downloaded 85,700,000 times between January and July, according to Backlinko; while between June and August, Latin America accounted for about one-third of downloads, Europe was 20%, and North America was 15%. The US, Brazil and Mexico together generated one-third. Temu, meanwhile, has some 416m monthly active users, spread evenly between Europe, the US and the rest of the world. 

“A lot of the growth is Asia to Europe,” said Mr Bloemen. “That is where new freighters are being deployed. For example, Emirates is deploying from Asia to the Gulf, and of course, to Europe. The ecommerce market is huge, and it’s growing, through what I tend to call the Asia-Europe banana, either direct or indirect.” 

Emirates agreed that there had been “dramatic” changes, one of which was technology enabling ecommerce. 

“I would argue maybe 50% to 60% of the volume in Hong Kong is ecommerce in some shape or form,” said Dennis Lister, SVP product and innovation for the carrier, which operates more than 30 freighters a week into China and Hong Kong. 

“And those are full, it’s difficult to get capacity out of China at the moment. A lot of that volume is ecommerce.” 

Emirates has streamlined its processes with the help of SmartKargo, enabling it to deliver “door-to-door digital”, a process Mr Lister said had been “incredibly difficult”, but “necessary if you want to win the race”. 

“And, trust me, we are winning the race. I believe we’ll be one of the biggest integrators in the world in the next five to 10 years.  

“You have to innovate, and technology plays a key role. But it also has a trap, so be very careful,” he warned, pointing to tech outages such as that seen recently at Amazon Web Services. 

The other challenge is the trade imbalance inherent in ecommerce. 

“We’re now looking at an increase in trade imbalance, and we’re also seeing much more of an imbalance when it comes to yields,” explained Mr Bloemen. “That generates a lot of charter activities, many more charters flying. So we see it on Asia-Europe. On Asia-North America, you’re now paying almost three times as much than on the way back. 

“Those trade imbalances are here to stay. And are actually going to be more pronounced, especially for ecommerce business coming from China.” 

Source: Aevean

And now, following the decline in ecommerce to the US, it is picking up again in advance of the holiday season and new streamlined processes for imports, 

 “Now the US is getting back – not at the levels we’ve seen before, but the drop is much less pronounced,” he added.  

Edward Burek, VP marketing and partnerships for SmartKargo, added: “I think there were a few people in the foetal position for a few weeks when [de minimis ended]... And then people figured it out, used technology, used those relationships.  

“The ecommerce market in the US is a little bit of a drug. Everybody is used to selling into it.”