Having opened a second office in Shanghai, Air Charter Service (ACS) is confident that business will continue to grow.
With the opening of the Shanghai office on 1 March, regional director APAC Stephen Fernandez is very happy with its performance.
He tells Air Cargo Week: “It is in line with budget and already profitable. It’s likely we will be expanding the cargo team sooner than expected as a result of the early successes.”
As the commercial centre of China, having an office in Shanghai made sense for ACS.
Fernandez says: “With an already large and growing customer base in Shanghai looked after by our Hong Kong and Beijing ACS account managers it was the next most logical location on the mainland to incorporate.”
Fernandez can confirm that the company is looking at adding Chinese offices, but is not at liberty to say where.
For the region, cargo director at the Hong Kong office Joseph Tam says that 2017 was an exceptional year with the global upswing in economic activity. There was a bit of a downturn in 2018 but ACS performed well.
As for this year, Tam says: “This year the charter business is proving to be more challenging, but I am confident that our team will continue their hard work and we will not slow down in terms of growth.”
China has unique restrictions for charter operations, says Tam. He says: “We use our expertise to manage our operations whilst abiding by these rules. ACS is a well-known global charter company and we support Chinese forwarders for all kinds of charter projects over the past decade.”
Tam believes that the air cargo market can only grow in the future. He says: “The Chinese government’s Belt and Road strategy is an opportunity for ACS. Our global network of 25 offices cover the countries under this initiative, therefore giving us the advantage in helping our Chinese customers to overcome all the charter operation challenges encountered in these countries.”
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