Fraport Group has announced that its first half of 2015 revenues rose 10.6 per cent to 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion), compared to 2014, but cargo dropped by 2.1 per cent year on year to about one million tonnes at Frankfurt Airport.
For Fraport’s leading cargo gateway, Frankfurt, 2015 could see freight volumes shrink by two per cent, according to the airport operator’s executive board half year interim report. And Fraport is selling 51 per cent of its handling business, Fraport Cargo Services, to Worldwide Flight Services.
In its report, Fraport cites what it calls, “preliminary figures,” from Airport Councils International, that show that from January to May, cargo tonnage, which it defines as airfreight and mail, “saw weak development with an increase of 0.4 per cent and…[it] was below the global level.” The report also quotes the ACI Freight Flash for 9 July which stated that Europe saw airfreight shrink from January to May by 0.1 per cent.
The report says of the decline at Frankfurt that: ““A noticeable decrease in cargo throughput with the Far East and Latin America regions had a negative effect on the cargo result.” The report also says: “Due to economic and political crises, particularly in some emerging countries, the cargo outlook continues to be subject to uncertainty.”
Fraport has varying levels of ownership of nine airports. These range from 10 per cent in New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport to 100 per cent in Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport. During the six months, two airports saw cargo fall, while others had double or triple digit rises.
