Through its unique freight forwarder business network on regional and global levels, ECS Group’s CargoConnect provides 24/7 commercial support in matching air freight with available scheduled and charter capacities, bringing together cargo and capacity..
“ECS Group goes the extra mile to maximise your loadfactor,” is CargoConnect’s tagline. Led by Jorrit Dubois, a dedicated CargoConnect team in Paris manages relationships with multinational forwarders, ensuring that ECS Group products are promoted at all levels. Moreover, CargoConnect is equipped to support freight forwarders in marketing any remaining capacity on their own dedicated programs. Working in close cooperation with ECS Group’s in-house Revenue Management team, CargoConnect is quickly able to identify and secure the optimum business mix.
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“Collaboration is always beneficial for business, but becomes absolutely crucial in times of chaos, as we have all seen over the past two years” Jorrit Dubois, coordinator of CargoConnect, observed. ECS Group created CargoConnect in September 2020, to counteract the mass disruption and uncertainty within the air cargo industry, caused by the domino effects of the pandemic. “Since we already foster solid business relationships with the world’s largest freight forwarders and airlines, we were in the unique position of having a central overview of existing controlled capacity programs and certain charter operations. As such, CargoConnect was able to provide much-needed support in quickly matching cargo with any available capacity – maximising load factors and efficient space utilisation.”
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CargoConnect’s service is just as relevant and welcome today, and it is adapting to market requirements. The Paris-based, CargoConnect team is in close, regular contact with the air freight heads of major forwarders, complementing what ECS Group GSAs do locally or on country level. Regular meetings have led to additional lines of business on top of what CargoConnect already offers to forwarders, such as charter arrangements (particularly during Covid), bidding for programs, and increased selling of rest-capacity on forwarder-controlled capacity programs.
“Among the ten Abilities that make up our Augmented GSA Concept, CargoConnect is a unique and clear example of how ECS Group goes beyond what is contracted, combining its well-established business relationships and local market knowledge to deliver swift solutions to pressing capacity issues,” Adrien Thominet, executive chairman of ECS Group, said. “By pooling and sharing capacity, our freight forwarder and airline customers are able to improve flight utilisation, which is not only financially rewarding, but more importantly, also increases customer satisfaction and ultimately ensures more sustainable operations.”
