Cargo volumes at Shanghai Pudong Air Cargo Terminal (PACTL) grew 4.5 per cent in 2016 and vice president for production, sales & marketing, Christian Haug tells Air Cargo Week’s (ACW) James Muir, he is expected to see further growth in 2017.
He says PACTL handled around 1.67 million tonnes in 2016 after a slow start to the year and even though it is getting harder to forecast the future, he is expecting more in 2017.
Describing 2016, Haug tells ACW: “After a slow start, the volumes started to pick up quite nicely already in the summer and we had a very nice peak in Q4 to finish the year strongly.”
For 2017, he says: “It is getting more and more difficult to forecast, but we expect a similar development as last year.”
Haug says particular commodities like textiles, electronics or car parts no longer dominate the Shanghai catchment area, and PACTL now handles a bit of everything.
He comments: “There is more and more express cargo in domestic services since online shopping is as much an important part of people’s consumption habit and meanwhile special cargo like temperature cargo, dangerous cargo, fresh is quickly improving in international.”
In April PACTL opened the International Air Transport Association Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics certified PACTL Cool Center in Terminal 1.
Haug says it has been very successful so far, saying: “Just ask our customers, they are very happy that we are able to have such a state of the art facility available for them and their customers. We see growth on both ends, although imports are still dominant.”
At the end of December, PACTL set up a joint venture with Nantong Xingdong Airport to establish a joint venture, PACTL Nantong Xingdong Airport Cargo Terminal (PACTL NTG).
Haug tells ACW that the first few weeks have been successful, saying: “The opening went smooth and we also had the first shipments fed into PVG. We are satisfied with the start and on plan. We have many ideas, but will take our time to slowly implement.”
He says PACTL is looking into new opportunities both inside and outside China. Haug says: “We working on several projects right now, we will start to talk about more details once we are more concrete. We are also looking into new technology that supports the business of our customers.”
As a cargo handling agent, Haug says digitisation, automation and product and new business development is becoming more and more important, saying: “The Cool Center is a first step into that direction, PACTL-NTG another one.”
Haug also believes the dynamics of the markets, new technology and new products such as cross border e-commerce are changing the industry.
He tells ACW: “We are part of that, not only as an cargo handling agent, more like a logistic provider.”
