News / TAC Index expands coverage - as air cargo demand appears to weaken

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The TAC Index, which provides independent, regular data on air cargo rates, has expanded the number of routes and baskets of routes it covers. 

From this week the index will include Singapore to south east Asia; London Heathrow to North America, the US, and south east Asia; Chicago to Europe, and Chicago to south east Asia. The index will add more routes over the coming weeks. 

Growing numbers of forwarders are participating, enabling the index to expand. All data providers are offered an Index Market Report monthly, in a pdf, which compares the index data to their own data, in what TAC said is “a very popular feature for our forwarder clients”. 

“Forwarders are embracing TAC Index and market indexation in order to benchmark against the market as a whole, and against a basket of their forwarder peers,” said John Peyton Burnett, managing director of TAC Index.

“Forwarders appreciate the insights now available to them, coupled with the fact they can use TAC Index as a customer-facing tool, as TAC Index is a neutral third-party indicator of market trends. 

“The entire TAC Index team is extremely excited about the roll-out of the new routes and baskets. It has taken many years of hard graft to get to this point. The finish line is now in sight to achieve total market indexation for air cargo.”  

The current news in air cargo remains bad, however. Speaking at Transport Logistic in Munich this morning, Dorothea von Boxberg, chief commercial officer of Lufthansa Cargo, said that “air cargo had gone into the red”.

“Many large markets are declining. Air cargo is hard to predict, it’s a short-term business, but we expect the trend to continue downwards for the next three to four months.

“Volatility has always been a part of our business.”

TAC initially has focused on the major trade lanes, using actual transaction data. The aim is to compile and publish reference prices “that are highly representative of physical market transaction prices for selected products”.  

The indices are based on price data submitted only by forwarders active in the relevant product markets.