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Issue 2 2014 Freight Business Journal Shake-up in Asian air freight


Japan is relatively immune so far from the rush by the Middle Eastern airlines to join Europe and Asia. This comes as some relief to Ian McCool of International Airline Marketing (IAM), the GSA in Ireland for All Nippon Airways. “There are new slots at


Haneda, formerly just a domestic airport for Tokyo, and ANA has moved many services across there. JAL has done just the same,” McCool says. “Haneda is closer to town than Narita and although it lacks freight infrastructure now, it will come within 12 months.” Another IAM client - AirAsia


X, the long-haul arm of the Kuala Lumpur based low-cost carrier - placed orders for 25 more


Airbus 330-300s in December. The carrier’s co-founder and director, Tony Fernandes, hinted at a return this year to London aſter AirAsia X pulled out of both this market and Paris in early 2012, claiming that its then aircraſt were not efficient enough to make the routes profitable. IAM, which currently accesses


Kuala Lumpur via interline agreements with Emirates and Etihad, would benefit from AirAsia’s resumption of London services, though McCool says the new fleet will not be delivered before 2016. Overall, he is positive


about exports from Ireland and says the commitment of pharmaceutical manufacturers


and forwarders to Good Distribution Practice will see some shipments that had migrated to sea freight revert to air.


Temperature-controlled


cargo is generating good yields for carriers, but McCool says Irish seafood, which “should attract a premium”, is now failing to do so. IATA figures put air freight


volume out of Ireland at 44,500 tonnes last year, an increase of 13.9%. The five fastest-growing air freight destinations were Bangkok (+84.9%), Shanghai (+59.6%), Los Angeles (+49.3%), Taipei (+41.7%) and Dubai (+41.0%). Boston and Chicago were the leading markets by volume.


Building a recovery


Turnover at International Warehousing & Transport (IWT) soared from €30 million to €40 million in 2013, far outpacing the gradual recovery in the Irish freight market, thanks to increases


in food, drink and


chemicals business. The company’s daily rail


service between Dublin Port and Ballina offers capacity of 10,000teu per year. IWT, as both transport provider and forwarder, works with its competitors to share the round trip, shipping raw materials and packaging into the area and manufactured products back out. But joint MD Paul Scully


explains that IWT is filling an increased portion of the train on its own account, and became a bigger player at the inland end of the route through buying Ballina-based Connect & Collect Transport last year. The acquisition gave the company a depot there with its own reach- stacker, as well as a fleet of trucks. International container traffic is up 20% year on year. “We’ve made big inroads into the reefer market. As agent for Tschudi, we have followed their move into the fruit and vegetables sector,” Scully explains. “We load back out on their Baltic and Scandinavian services via our


Rotterdam hub.” Ireland-UK trailer movements


are up to more than 15,000 a year - “and we’re finding backloads,” Scully comments. Construction, which most observers thought would be dead for years to come aſter Ireland’s frantic building spree in the early 2000s, is making a surprise comeback. “During the construction


boom huge volumes of materials came into Ireland, and some customers are coming back in,” Scully says. “It used to be pre-cast walls for apartment blocks. Now insulation is a big line for us as part-finished properties are completed.”


New trailers for Knights


Kettering-based Knights of Old has bought three new double-deck trailers for its Irish service. The company has operating its own trucks in Ireland since 2000, and moves 65,000 pallets to and


from Ireland each


year. The company, which has


operated its own trucks in Ireland since 2000, moves 65,000 pallets to and from Ireland each year. Knights has its own office in Dublin with a dedicated customer service team and it


regularly operates 10 groupage trailers a night to Ireland, with a next day service to Belfast and


Dublin and 48 hrs to anywhere else in Ireland for 90% of UK destinations.


///IRELAND AOG – OMG!


Domestic Irish freight forwarders constantly have to reinvent themselves to survive against the logistics multinationals, either moving into specialist niches or specifically targeting small and medium-sized customers. Tobin Shipping & Transport has


adopted both strategies, setting up an aircraſt on ground (AOG) operation a year ago and using existing Sprinter van capacity where appropriate to deliver spare parts to grounded aircraſt. The idea sprang from a request


for urgent delivery of a helicopter part to Aberdeen, recalls MD Simon Tobin. He realised that a lot of these


calls for help would be generated within Ireland because of the active aircraſt leasing and financing sector there - though of course stranded operators, and brokers and dealers handling spare parts, can be anywhere in the world. Major components may require a large truck, or remote aircraſt failures a special charter. But just as oſten a small part is needed that can go on a same-day van, or courier- accompanied by air. “It’s basic freight forwarding but more tightly managed and tracked,” Tobin explains. He points out that corporate jets oſten have to be flight-ready


at extremely short notice. A Gulfstream owner doesn’t want to be grounded for a want of a single part that can cost thousands and will not be kept in stock locally. Off the back of its AOG work, the


company launched an express service to spare parts companies. “It’s outside the traditional pallet network business. The driver puts the part in the customer’s hand or sees it on to the machine, with a scanned PoD sent back to the client in real time,” Tobin says. Tobin now provides same-day


express delivery across Ireland and a next-day UK and European pallet and parcel service called 24plus.


The Cardinal sets sail for Ireland


North-west England-based NVOCC Cardinal Maritime is set to open a Dublin office on 3 April as part of a wider plan to expand across the whole of Europe. The new location, in the established logistics region of Santry near Dublin Airport, will initially be managed by a member of staff seconded from the company’s head


office in Manchester,


aided by locally-recruited staff. The


also looking for an Irish equity partner. Cardinal Maritime already


has some Irish business on its network of


global NVOCC


services, but the new outlet will boost volume still further, explained brand managing director, Rick White. There will be a dedicated Irish


website that will offer the same features as Cardinal in the UK, including online pricing which,


company’s owners are


says White, could be a first in the Irish market. Initially, traffic to or from Ireland will be fed via the existing UK services, but in time


direct


consolidations to or from Ireland could develop, White added. There are relatively few NVOCCS in the Irish market at the moment. Receiving depots will be at Dublin, Shannon, Cork and Galway. The move into Ireland is


a prelude to a much wider expansion of the Cardinal brand across the whole of Europe over the next 2-3 years, said White. “We already have relationships in places across Europe and we would expect to replicate our ‘dot comm’ model in these,” he explained. The move into foreign markets


is prompted by Cardinals’ existing large market share in the UK where Cardinal is already


among the top three NVOCCs, he says. He adds: “While there is a lot


more competition in continental Europe than there is in the UK, there is also a lot more business. In the UK, we now have a large slice of the business and we’re already among the country’s top three NVOCCs, so there isn’t scope for massive expansion here. The Continent is the only way we’ll achieve our target to grow from £50m to £100m turnover in the next 4-5 years. And many of our clients have asked us when we are going to start services on the Continent.” Target countries would


include the Netherlands Germany and East Europe, and


would


initially be


Operationally, services “import-led”. services would


run independently of the UK services.


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