RUSSIA\\\


The Russian market has been transformed over the last few months, said former Volga-Dnepr Group senior vice president of sales and marketing, Robert van de Weg. in an interview with FBJ some weeks before his departure from the company, he explaind that Russia is


traditionally an import-dominated market as far


as airfreight is concerned, and as such had been suffering badly from both trade sanctions and the drastic fall in the value of the Rouble. General cargo, flowers and even pharma products were all down, by around 30%. “However, since mid-2016


the situation has reversed,” he explains. The exchange


rate has recovered and, just as importantly, an e-commerce boom has taken hold in Russia. The potential for online


shopping in Russia could, if anything, be even greater than in the West, de Weg believes. “In Russia, they don’t have shopping malls on every corner, so e-commerce is really taking off.”


Ruslan joint venture disbanded


for service quality and reliability over more than 26 years. “We have the advantage


of the experience we gained from the end of our An-124 joint venture with HeavyLiſt Cargo


Airlines in 2001, and


Volga-Dnepr Airlines and Antonov Airlines announced in November that they would end their An-124-100 freighter joint venture, Ruslan International, at the end of 2016. The two companies - Russian and Ukrainian respectively -set Ruslan up in 2006 to jointly market the 17-strong An124 fleet and boost improve availability of the unique ‘self-loading’ aircraſt. Volga-Dnepr said its 12 aircraſt


fleet would still be the largest in the world of the type. Volga-Dnepr Group will


continue to collaborate with Antonov


on


airworthiness and flight safety support for its An-124-100 fleet. In a statement,


Volga-Dnepr’s vice president strategic m an a g em en t and charter cargo operations of Volga- Dnepr Group, Tatyana Arslanova, said: “Our joint venture with Antonov Airlines has enjoyed ten fruitful


years and


during this time we have been able to ensure our global customers have benefited from the unique operating capabilities of the An- 124 whenever and wherever they have needed them. With


Senior sales vice-president, Robert van de Weg, has quit the carrier.


and our customers and this represents a new and exciting chapter for Volga-Dnepr Group as we continue to build upon the reputation we have earned


the world’s largest fleet of An- 124 freighters, Volga-Dnepr is committed to maintaining this capability for our customers with our own services, supported by our worldwide offices.” Her colleague, vice president,


development and special projects Dennis Gliznoutsa, added: “Volga-Dnepr is a private group of companies and a commercial enterprise that is proud to support major customers in industries across the globe. We are free to take commercial decisions that are in the best interests of our group


the subsequent growth of our outsize and heavyweight cargo business in the international market. We emerged from that JV stronger and now, 15 years later, we will do so again. We now have an even more diverse and capable product offering for our customers under our ‘Cargo Supermarket’ concept, which combines our growing An-124, IL-76TD-90VD, Boeing 747 and 737 freighter fleet and logistics services.” Outgoing senior vice president,


sales and marketing at Volga- Dnepr Group, Robert van de Weg, said that the decision to end the Ruslan partnership had been “purely a business decision”. There was no animosity between the two companies, but Volga- Dnepr believed that it would now be better off going it alone and taking full charge of its entire fleet capacity. Volga-Dnepr did


not plan to add any new capacity to replace that operated by its former partner, he continued. Quite apart from anything else, commercially- operable An124s are not readily available on the open market and the type is no long being built. However, now


that Volga-Dnepr was acting as a single


company, customers should see a swiſter and more responsive approach and the


company


would be even easier to deal with in future.


Issue 1 2017 - Freight Business Journal A market transformed


Nor does Russia’s harsh winter climate encourage shoppers to venture outside, if they can order goods from the comfort of their centrally-heated homes. As many of the goods ordered


online will come from China or the rest of Asia, rather than Europe, the e-commerce market has scarcely been affected by the West’s economic sanctions against Russia. It’s only the weak Rouble that had been hampering the growth of the market until recently. The e-commerce boom could


also lead to the Russian market being dispersed away from the traditional major import centres of St Petersburg and Moscow, although as an air carrier handling over shipments to Russian deliver specialists, including


the massive postal


network, Volga-Dnepr doesn’t necessarily see that trend in terms of its traffic to the country. “But intuitively I would say, yes, it


will help to move demand away from just the big cities,” says de Weg.


AirBridge Carriers (ABC), the


Volga-Dnepr Group’s scheduled airfreight arm, continues to expand, meanwhile. New services recently added include Chongqing in China, Oslo, London Heathrow, Heuston and Abu Dhabi, and expansion of both traffic and network is set to continue into 2017, says de Weg. Plans to start services to Taipei are at an advanced stage, for example. ABC’s operations are hubbed


at Moscow Sheremetyevo airport, which itself has set in train plans for a massive expansion. The carrier has put in a major


order for new Boeing 747-8 freighters, two of which are due to be added to the fleet in 2017 with many more due to follow. One of the secrets of ABC’s


success, De Weg considers, is that whereas other carriers tend to operate into single destinations with long trucking legs to reach the actual destination, ABC


15


likes to get much closer to its customers (literally) by using much more localised hubs such as Heathrow or Oslo, for example. The decision to serve


Heathrow rather than Stansted (the most popular choice of London airport by freighter operators) is a case in point, says De Weg. “In some ways, Heathrow is a bit


forgotten,


but it’s traditionally the main gateway for the forwarders, who have a lot of sunk costs there. It’s always been important because of the amount of belly capacity available at Heathrow, and flying there gives us much shorter times to reach the forwarders.” For many years, though, it was


near-impossible for the freighter operators to get slots at Heathrow but the new management of the airport has a much more proactive cargo policy. So far, ABC is operating two


freighters a week between Heathrow and Moscow and early indications are that the service is going down well with customers.


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