Growth with Sustainability: Air Cargo Logistics' New Challenge

The Air Transport and Cargo session of TLME's Future of Logistics Conference Part 3 began with Moderator and CEO of Vespucci Maritime, Lars Jensen, asking the panellists if air freight operations have returned to "normal" after the turbulence of the last three years.

Speakers for the session were:

• Fabio Weiss, VP, Head of Air Freight MEA at DHL Global Forwarding

• Robert Sutton, Senior Vice President Freezone, Cargo & Logistics, Abu Dhabi Airports

• Mazen Al Homsi, Director Of Sales, Digital Cargo

• Hassan Jamaleddine, Director of Supply Chain, NewBridge Pharmaceuticals

Fabio Weiss said that "people tend to forget very quickly" that before the pandemic the industry did suffer from some overcapicity which quickly disappeared during the years of the pandemic. However, today the situation has become more like it was pre-pandemic.

Robert Sutton said today there was limited fleet capacity in the market as carriers were flying more and more narrow body passenger planes which was affecting their cargo capacity. The sustainability challenges were also drawing more carriers to narrow body planes.

The consultancy business was doing okay said Mazen Al Homsi and air cargo capacity was coming back while rates have dropped which was good for air freight customers. Today, we need to come up with new ideas and have "revolution" in air cargo operations to take them to the next level.

Hassan Jamaleddine said that today, production levels are back to normal but pharma cargo operations were still volatile due to various factors.

Mr Jensen then asked the panellists how the air cargo industry will tackle growth and sustainability at the same time?

To this Mr Jamaleddine said he started to hear about sustainability in the industry a couple of years ago and as a user he would not mind paying a little extra for sustainable pharma logisticsas it would play well with his customers.

Fabio Wiess said that DHL has a very ambitious sustainability target. The outgoing DHL CEO in his farewell speech that DHL must make effort to move their customers to sustainable logistics. He said it takes a collaborative effort between customers, carriers and logistics companies to achieve low carbon or zero carbon shipping.

And there was an appetite for that in the market, he added.

The other panellists agreed but sustainability targets needed to realistic and achievable moving forward.

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