Opportunities arising for ECS Group to reinvent itself

0
593
ECS Group chief executive officer, Adrien Thominet


As the airfreight industry continues to grow, ECS Group chief executive officer, Adrien Thominet (pictured) sees a great opportunity to reinvent itself.

In 2017 ECS noted a “nice increase” of freight volumes, mostly driven by pharmaceuticals and e-commerce, while demand was increasing faster than capacity, which helped yields.

Several indicators confirm that exports, particularly for e-commerce and consumer confidence remain positive and are holding up well.

Thominet comments: “This excellent world economic recovery predicts an optimistic dash of growth in 2018.”

At ECS, Thominet says: “In 2017 our managers have shown of strong involvement. This is powering for sure lot of vitality to surrender our 2018 challenges: cargo business is changing and offering a great opportunity to reinvent ourselves.

“In 2018, ECS gets in step with the industry’s standards: digitalisation, compliance, new range of innovative services, social medias.”

Around the world, Thominet says North America had the strongest financial performance, Europe saw double-digit growth and strong demand on Europe-Asia routes, while Asia Pacific was very strong in specific markets such as e-commerce and pharma.

Asia and Latin America will be the focus areas for 2018. The GSA business represents less than 10 per cent of airfreight activity, and with business increasing each year, Thominet says there is huge potential for growth.

E-commerce is also transforming the industry landscape so companies have to develop capabilities to optimise new technologies.

Thominet says: “They are a real advantage to bring more specific additional services, especially in terms of transparency, visibility and promptness our customers are asking for. Airline needs are changing and we have to adapt ourselves to match them.”

The three things GSAs and GSSAs need to focus on are digitalisation, integration and e-commerce, and Thominet says ECS has structured the group around the imperative of transformation in the industry.

He says: “We confirmed our will to strengthen our general organisation and we hired dedicated people to lead the transformation, in terms of digitalisation also. We welcomed new talents among our company to provide best and specific services required by our customers.

“Beyond the necessity of providing guarantees a GSSA must also be able to attract dedicated people, human resources and top specialists. Hence this is the way we think of 2018. A rigorous and ambitious roadmap.”