Newcastle opens new markets for Emirates


40


Even the people at Emirates Skycargo were a little bit startled when the carrier started its direct flights from Newcastle to Dubai five years ago. “To be honest, Newcastle always used to be a trucking hub, but when we put flights into Newcastle, cargo loads went up ten- fold,” says cargo manager for Northern England and Scotland, Ross Barnett. Now, on the service’s fifth


anniversary in September, Emirates will celebrate by replacing the A330- 200 with a 777-300ER, at a stroke increasing daily cargo capacity by around 50% to 20 tonnes. The 777 can accommodate a minimum of eight pallet positions even with a full passenger load and will offer a great deal more flexibility. But just as the pioneer service


effectively created its own market, Ross Barnett is pretty confident that he will be able to find traffic to fill the space. “Whenever we’ve put on capacity, it’s generated a market,” he says. To some extent, manufacturers base their decisions on what to


make, and where, on the availability of suitable transport capacity. If a pharmaceutical company – of which there are many in the North-East – finds it can get products to Asia via Emirates’ Dubai hub quicker than from other parts of the world, then the North-East plant will get the business. Also, a lot of freight business to and


from Newcastle doesn’t show up in official CASS statistics, Ross Barnett believes. If a forwarder consolidates freight at another gateway, it may well show as a shipment to or from that location, rather than the Newcastle area. That is why it is very important for a carrier like Emirates to work with the local forwarding community


in Newcastle - there are around 20 international and local firms, Barnett reckons - to develop traffic. “There’s lots of good business here,” says Barnett. “As well as pharmaceuticals, there’s Nissan and the oil industry, to name two, and they all generate time-sensitive cargo.” Nissan’s announcement that its


plant in nearby Sunderland is to build a new hatchback-sized car can only be good news. Even though cars and components are “ultimately a seafreight product”, the ramp-up to production will generate airfreight and the Nissan factories around the world continue to generate impressive flows of air cargo. “Sometimes, seafreight isn’t quick


Issue 3 2012


enough,” explains Ross Barnett. Suffice to say, that at a time when


other carriers in the UK have tended to run down their cargo presence in the regions, Emirates has been ramping its activities up with direct services operating from the likes of Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow – and it can hardly be a coincidence that Emirates is now the UK’s third largest freight airline (excluding the integrators), after BA and Virgin. Naturally, Emirates dominates the


flown cargo statistics at Newcastle where, apart from the integrators, it is the only significant carrier. According to an airport spokeswoman, the only other major freight operator is Royal Mail which use a Jet2.com aircraft. British Airways move their freight to Birmingham where it then transfers to air. “It can sometimes be a challenge if


you’re looking for growth,” continues Barnett. “But so far exports have been very good, though imports are a bit sluggish, thanks to the recession.” Emirates Skycargo has two local representatives in Newcastle. “When you’re looking for every kilo, having a local relationship gets you closer to the cargo – and the UK can be quite a parochial country. It’s the same in


///NORTHEAST


Manchester.” Actually,


Emirates is in the


interesting position of having more cargo capacity available in the regions than in London. With the introduction of A380s with their relatively small cargo capacity on routes from London and the deployment of the cargo- hungry 777s on regional services, it gives the opportunity to mix and match traffic from different stations to available capacity. Obviously, it makes sense for the most urgent cargo to fly from a local airport but deferred freight might be trucked to another gateway if more space can be found there. Part of the secret to Emirates’


success in the UK regions lies several thousand miles away at the carrier’s Dubai hub. The policy has been to expand this whenever needed and ensure that freight flows through it, as quickly and as trouble-free as possible. The result is that freight can be loaded onto a flight in Newcastle and flown to Dubai for a quick transfer to a connecting flight in little more time than it would take to truck south and negotiate the Heathrow labyrinth. It might come as a surprise to learn


of some of the destinations and origins for Emirates cargo at Newcastle. As well as China, Asia, the Middle East and Australasia cargo also reaches or


comes from South America or Russia, despite the apparent ‘out-of-the-way’ routing. (Emirates has reported record levels of trade to South America with over 25,000 tonnes over the past year.) “It might look like a dog-leg on


the map, but if you give cargo to us in Newcastle on a Tuesday, we can have it in both those destinations by Thursday.” One nice-to-have in Newcastle


would be a scanning facility under the ‘REST’ (formerly RASCO) scanning scheme for denser freight that cannot be X-rayed. At the moment, any cargo that fails to X-ray has to be trucked to another airport that has got a scanning facility, adding delay, cost and uncertainty. “We are in discussion with several companies and with our handling agents Servisair,” explains Barnett. “It may only be about 15 tonnes of cargo that we need to send to Manchester or London every month but it would mean that any cargo that has to be scanned could still be flown from here.” One possible solution might be to copy Glasgow’s example and courier air samples from the cargo to facilities elsewhere, which does at least mean that the cargo can remain at Newcastle and be flown from there, albeit with some delay.


STOP PLAYING AROUND WITH YOUR LOGISTICS.


We are PD Ports and we are at the forefront of portcentric logistics offering our customers the benefit of port located importation and distribution centres across the UK.


We can give your business something different - Portability. Providing you with choice and flexibility we can tailor our service to your logistics requirements which ultimately optimises your supply chain. Portcentric logistics is at the heart of efficient, green, lean, global end to end supply chain management and is the smart way to take cost out of your supply chain.


Isn’t it time you took a step towards the future?


WINNER ASDA


CARRIER OF THE YEAR 2012 WWW.PDPORTS.CO.UK


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44