News / Partnerships 'the way forward' for air cargo in a changing world

ID 2399551 © Stephen Coburn

Key air cargo players are looking for partners to keep up with the fast-evolving global trade landscape, delegates at the 10th annual Caspian Air Cargo Summit heard.

In Baku, Marco Bloeman, MD of Aevean, examined the shifting dynamics in global trade amid the disruptive US tariff policies.  

He said: “With Europe and the US, we finally made an agreement … this has had an impact on flow. We have seen the China to the US flow go down by 20%. It’s the largest market. Laptops, clothing, electronics went down.

“Right now, we’re seeing Vietnam go up, with laptops in particular; we’re seeing Taiwan go up, with equipment for data centres. It’s just booming. We literally see flows shifting.” 

Indeed, director general of Tiaca Glyn Hughes noted that not only were stakeholders adopting a ‘China plus one’ approach when manufacturing, but also a ‘US plus one’ tactic in the distribution of their goods.  

And Shailesh Kumar, head of EU air cargo at Amazon, said that Amazon Air Cargo’s approach, of “working backwards from the customers”, when expanding its network, had meant it was now seeing new opportunities.  

“We started growing our presence in Europe with our 737 fleet… and we also have partnerships with some other airlines and carriers to carry Amazon packages around,” he said.  

“From India, we go to China, Vietnam, on a charter basis, and we have a pretty good network within India itself. We have US-LATAM accounts that we have started… and also the Asia-US transfer programmes via Anchorage.” 

Mr Kumar revealed that Amazon Air Cargo would “definitely” be editing its network in India soon and that, as part of its aim to expand networks, Amazon was keen to work with other airlines. 

“We are constantly looking to work with our carrier partners to extend interline networks, so that we can grow our partnership on both Amazon packages and cargo growth together,” he said. 

“We are completely new kids on the block. So, we are trying to expand into doing things that, of course, all cargo carriers here already do… and also from a network and route expansion perspective. Like Malta, Nordics is something that we are starting or have started already,” Mr Kumar added. 

United Cargo also expressed a willingness to collaborate to increase its footprint in the cargo sector, “amid growing opportunities”.  The Loadstar previously reported on how this would be a major pillar of its growth strategy.

Marco Vezjak, its director of sales & charters, said: “We’re close to maxing-out of where we can go as a passenger airline and we still think there is so much opportunity out there to further expand as a cargo division and further increase our relevance by doing charters.”

He noted that through the Covid period, United’s use of passenger aircraft to operate some 17,000 cargo-only flights had helped it grow as the biggest airline serving the US to Australia lane, “purely based on the ecommerce” it flew.

“There was a lot of opportunity and success there that really benefited us overall. So, we would not want to let go of that now that the world is more back to normal, and still see what we can do in that arena,” he revealed.

But despite these ambitions, Mr Vezjak urged that United “cannot do it by [itself]”.

“You will very unlikely ever see, at least in the foreseeable future, a freighter with a United logo on it,” he said.

“And therefore, we’re looking at partners that see and feel the same opportunity – that if we work together, we create win-win situations where each single party has a benefit, that we can continue to grow, and we can still promote it under the United brand… That’s what we believe is the way forward.”