ISSUE 4 2010


FRANcE


Freighters flock again to France’s premier gateway


Paris Charles de Gaulle’s freight business is recovering well from the recession, says David Kem, cargo marketing and operational manager of Paris- Charles de Gaulle. Following a 10% fall in 2009


over the previous year, it is now doing “a bit better than before”, boosted by numerous new flights, especially from Asia he says. These include new operator


Air China Cargo, with two flights per week from Shanghai since March 2010. Kem adds: “We’re also very


very happy to welcome back Transmediterranean”.


The


Lebanese all-cargo carrier, which had stopped all its operations, is back in the air with a twice- weekly A330 freighter twice a week into Paris. Airbridge has been putting two flights a week


David Kem


into Paris from Moscow since the end of August and Cathay Pacific has been operating a five times a week freighter. CDG’s cargo and mail traffic


stood at 1.73m tonnes on 5 September, 18% up on the same period in 2009. “We are still waiting the Beaujolais Nouveau in November and the Christmas peak to get an overall picture of the year 2010. But for the moment, it’s looking good,” says Kem. At the time of writing, France


was gripped by a wave of strikes and demonstrations against the government’s proposed reforms to the pension laws, but it was too early to say what effect if any that would have on airfreight in Paris. CDG’s cargo traffic dwarfs that


of its neighbour Orly, with about 80,000 tonnes. Nevertheless, the second Paris airport still manages to be France’s number two cargo hub. Kem says he would like to see


the development of air freight in all French airports; after all, Germany manages to support three or four major cargo airports so France, despite its greater degree of centralisation, should be able to able a couple of alternatives. That said, Paris Charles de


Gaulle takes on many of the functions that secondary airports would fulfill in other countries.


French flag carrier thinks small to boost export trade


Air France-KLM Cargo has substantially boost its French export air cargo business from medium and smaller size forwarders, following a recent change of policy. In fact, since implementation


of the new strategy began in April this year, the French national carrier has increased its share of that market sector from an “extremely low” 2-3% to 16%, a senior executive told FBJ in a recent exclusive interview. AF-KL Cargo’s senior vice president sales and distribution, Jean Charles Foucault, said the global economic crisis of 2008 and early 2009 and the air cargo market downturn had helped highlight the fact that the carrier’s share of business from medium and small forwarders in the French market was “not at the right level. “Of course we wanted to


keep our extremely strong relationship with the big forwarders in the French market but we decided we also needed to develop a deeper relationship with medium and smaller size customers,” he stated. To help achieve that objective, continued Foucault, AF-KL Cargo had set up a small team based in Lyon, the carrier’s second most important French air cargo


bellyholds had risen from 41% in the pre-crisis year of 2007/08 to 54% currently. (FBJ, Issue 3, Page 2)


“Medium and smaller size forwarders are typically the right customers for bellyhold capacity because the size of their shipments is generally not that big,” pointed out Foucault. Overall, he continued, AF-KL


Jean Charles Foucault: looking to develop deeper links with medium and smaller customers


gateway after Paris Charles de Gaulle, to proactively call relevant customers. “That does not mean just sending a sales rep – it means really improving the dialogue with those customers,” he emphasised. “Following the success of the team in Lyon, we are just about to start the same type of operation in Paris.” Foucault went on to point out


that the new focus on winning more business from French medium and smaller forwarders also fitted in with AF-KL Cargo’s present general strategy of putting much greater emphasis on its bellyhold capacity rather than full freighter operations – the group recently revealed that the share of its total system- wide cargo capacity provided by


Cargo currently had a 24-25% share of the French air cargo export market in volume terms, based on IATA CASS (Cargo Accounts Settlement Systems) statistics, and 32-33% in revenue terms. “In the first part of this year we did lose a little bit of market share due to our cargo capacity reductions but figures for September showed that decline had stopped,” commented Foucault. Overall, reported Foucault, the


French export air cargo market had seen a volume increase of around 17% over the first three quarters of this year compared with 2009, very much in line with the 15-20% European average for major countries (excluding Germany which saw 30-35%). “For the fourth quarter, my best guess for the French market would be a figure of about 10%. Beyond that, to be honest, I really don’t know,” he concluded.


It is the main European hub for Fedex, and as already illustrated, it has a thriving full-freighter business – business that in the UK and elsewhere would mostly now be moved to secondary gateways. It’s also huge – four runways,


and pretty much unlimited space for expansion. “We have the airlines, the forwarders – pretty much anything you need to move freight,” says Kem. Paris could also further break


the mould in future by becoming one of Europe’s first air-rail freight hubs. The ‘Carex’ programme to move urgent freight on high- speed trains between London, Paris and Amsterdam is still live, insists Kem, although its likely inauguration date has been put back slightly to 2015/16. A possible site near the Olympics arena in East London has been


Vatry rebuilds after Avient


Vatry airport is rebuilding its cargo business after the departure of all-cargo African carrier Avient, says deputy general manager, Youri Busaan. The north-eastern gateway is now the largest airport for charter operations, handling two thirds of all from France, he said. Vatry was the kingpin in France’s relief effort for the Pakistan floods, a clear demonstration of the its flexibility. Meanwhile, Champagne region president Jean-Paul Bachy has signed a second cooperation agreement with Sichuan province in China to set up an airfreight service between the two regions, according to local press reports. L’hebdo du vendredi added that technical discussions between Vatry and Chengdu Shuangliu airports were already underway and that, if all went well, the first flights could be operating in 18 months’ time. Airport director-general Gilles Darriau has suggested that there could initially be two 747 freighter flights per week. Following Avient’s departure, there have inevitably been some redundancies, but core skills have been retained. “We’ve got all the


key positions covered – we just need additional hands when we have a heavy traffic load, as with the Pakistan charters,” says Busaan. Meanwhile, the airport can offer fast response


times, 24-hour capability and can handle any size of aircraft. A full package of services are available, including handling, pre-consolidation and trucking. “We’re not just the airport authority – we’re also the handler and we can call on equipment like cranes, which are just a phone call away,” Busaan explains. The airport isn’t the whole story at Vatry


– it comes with a logistics park attached; tenants include Ceva and a range of biotech manufacturers and, unusually for France, companies can own their own land. There is also 2500 sq m of temperature controlled space and a rail link. Inevitably, people make comparisons between


Vatry and Germany’s somewhat busier alternative airport at Hahn, which is a similar distance from Frankfurt as Vatry is from Paris. “We are just a little younger than Hahn, and Germany has more freight in and out,” points out Busaan.


earmarked for the London terminal. Freight operators and agents


at the airport will also soon be linked to customs by a new cargo information network. “It will allow better, faster tracing of cargo and get rid of a lot of paperwork,” says Kem. “We will know exactly where goods


23


Business is picking up in Paris, including those all-important all- cargo carriers. Chris Lewis talks to Aerport de Paris’ David Kem.


are, and improve sharing of information.” ADP and the rest of the industry is bringing all these advantages to the attention of the worldwide shipping industry through a marketing programme, which kicked off at the Air Cargo Forum in Amsterdam in early November.


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