Lutz Honerla will become the new Managing Director of Flughafen Düsseldorf Cargo GmbH (FDCG) on 1 May 2020. Until the end of July, he will manage the business together with Gerton Hulsman, who will retire at the end of August. Mr. Honerla has been working at Düsseldorf Airport for 30 years. The 59-year-old is currently head of marketing and strategy. He studied in Trier, is married, has two children and lives with his family in Meerbusch-Osterath.
“The course has been set for the future of FDCG. Lutz Honerla seamlessly follows on from what Gerton Hulsman has built up over the past few years at the Düsseldorf logistics location. Mr. Honerla is an experienced aviation expert and we are pleased to have won him over for this position. He brings with him first-class airline contacts from his previous activities and has an excellent network at the airport,” emphasizes Thomas Schnalke, CEO of Flughafen Düsseldorf GmbH.
Lutz Honerla will contribute his wide-ranging knowledge of the industry to Flughafen Düsseldorf Cargo GmbH from May onwards. Gerton Hulsman: “Düsseldorf’s strength in the cargo business lies in the loading of freight in passenger aircraft. This is where Lutz Honerla will be able to make optimum use of his many years of know-how in passenger transport”.
Thomas Schnalke: “We wish Lutz Honerla every success in his new position. At the same time we would like to express our special thanks to Mr. Hulsman for 13 years of successful work at Düsseldorf Airport. Under his leadership, for example, our cargo subsidiary became the first German company to receive CEIV pharmaceutical certification from the International Air Transport Association for its safe handling of pharmaceutical products. Now we wish him all the best for his well-deserved retirement when he leaves the company at the end of August”.
Düsseldorf Airport is a first-class location for air freight. More than 100,000 German and international companies are located in the region. 18 million people live within a radius of 100 kilometers in the catchment area of Düsseldorf International Airport. The Rhine-Ruhr region is also the third strongest economic area in Europe.
Flughafen Düsseldorf Cargo GmbH is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Flughafen Düsseldorf GmbH and employs around 200 people. The company manages the import cargo handling of almost all airlines operating at the airport in Düsseldorf and runs the export warehouse for more than 40 airlines. Last year, the company handled around 81,000 tons of air freight.
Thilo Schmid, Senior Vice President Aviation, and his team will remain the familiar contacts in the aviation sector for all airline partners at Düsseldorf Airport even after Lutz Honerla’s move.
Christos Spyrou, CEO and founder of Neutral Air Partner (NAP), has joined the board of directors of TIACA (The International Air Cargo Association), which will next meet in Istanbul following the World Cargo Symposium.
At the end of 2019, TIACA announced the creation of a new membership category to allow small companies and startups to become TIACA members at a rate designed to reflect their size and financial capacity. Alongside this, the partnership concluded with Neutral Air Partner allowed NAP’s 250 members to automatically become TIACA members.
Spyrou’s appointment to the association’s board forms part of this expansion and modernisation drive. TIACA’s aim is to combine the strengths of all stakeholders, consolidate all concerns and priorities, take inspiration from practices in each sector and represent the interests of the air freight industry as a whole.
“Christos’s nomination is fully in line with our ambition to open up our association’s doors as widely as possible to all stakeholders in our industry. His unrivalled knowledge of air freight, coupled with his high level of involvement in our industry and his ability to bring people together, will help us achieve that ambition,” said Steven Polmans, chairman of TIACA.
Spyrou brings 30 years of experience in the airfreight industry to TIACA’s board. Both an entrepreneur and an expert in the sector, his specialist areas include advanced airfreight consolidation management, neutral air freight wholesale, ULD utilisation and equalisation, gateway planning, networking, and effective selling and sourcing for the professional air freight broker and forwarder.
“For me, joining TIACA’s board is a real opportunity to contribute on a global level to building the future of our industry. I would like to thank TIACA for its confidence in me, and I will devote all of my energy and expertise to serving our association,” said Spyrou, CEO and founder of Neutral Air Partner.
Swissport plans to equip all of its warehouses with Unilode and Descartes Bluetooth technology by the end of the year. The readers in the 115 warehouses will track and monitor digitally-tagged unit load devices (ULD) to increase transparency for customers.
Hendrik Leyssens, Swissport’s vice president global operations-cargo, says geolocation of ULD enables real-time tracking and inventory control, enabling airlines and freight companies to plan the distribution of their vast ULD fleets more efficiently and cost effectively.
“Our cooperation with Unilode and Descartes and the introduction of global ULD tracking at our cargo warehouses will drive the digital transformation of the cargo supply chain and the industry.”
Swissport, the global leader in airport ground services and air cargo handling, is continuously investing in new technologies and automation at its warehouses. It introduced self-service cargo kiosks to enable truck-drivers to skip counter queues and manual paperwork processing, speeding up the delivery of time-critical shipments.
In 2019, some 4.6m tons of air cargo passed through Swissport’s warehouses worldwide. Major cargo expansion projects are currently underway in Frankfurt, Germany, and Melbourne, Australia, both due to open in the third quarter of 2020.
TAP Air Portugal (TAP), has entered into a partnership with cargo e-booking platform cargo.one.
The digital platform will be connected with TAP’s cargo system in the second quarter of this year.
The partnership will provide TAP with access to cargo.one’s customer base and a faster channel to market for new cargo products.
It will also provide TAP with digital capabilities, such as online distribution and dynamic pricing, as well as reinforcing “operational efficiency and day-to-day service quality of the airline”.
Moritz Claussen, managing director of cargo.one, commented: “We are delighted that the TAP Air Cargo team has selected cargo.one to help drive their extraordinary growth and transformation.
“At cargo.one we strive to work with the most forward-thinking airlines around the globe. TAP Air Cargo has an outstanding team, which has shown foresight to embrace technology in order to drive growth and to put its customers first.”
Bernardo Nunes, product and services senior manager at TAP Air Cargo, added, “We are increasingly interested in providing new cargo products to our customers and will leverage cargo.one as a distribution channel for those.
“The platform represents an excellent channel for effectively marketing products to freight forwarders with fast lead times, better exposure, and less complicated processing than with traditional channels.
“Time to market is absolutely critical to us, as we understand that together with excellent access, and unique user experience these are key attributes towards complete customer centricity.”
Numerous leading airlines are already connected with and distribute their air cargo capacity on cargo.one. The platform is also used by more than 400 freight forwarders.
Honeywell has announced it will upgrade airfield lighting control and monitoring systems at Incheon International Airport (ICN) as the fourth phase of an ongoing improvement project. The upgrades will help enhance passenger service and streamline airport operations, while simultaneously enabling safer, faster travel. The work is underway and expected to be completed by October 2022.
Recent construction of the airport’s fourth runway and expansion of its northern remote apron have increased flight capacity per hour from 90 to 107 flights, and the opening of Terminal 2 has allowed ICN to accommodate 18 million passengers and 50 million tons of cargo per year. In parallel, increased air traffic has created demand for a new guidance system – one that allows pilots to easily navigate ICN’s complex runways, taxiways and other airfield surfaces.
To help address these challenges, Honeywell is installing its Airfield Ground Lighting Control and Monitoring System (AGLCMS) and Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) technologies to promote safer navigation through enhanced controllability under most traffic or visibility conditions, while enhancing overall operational efficiency.
“With more than 380,000 flights managed yearly, Incheon International Airport is one of the highest-trafficked gateways to Southeast Asia,” said Chang-Jun Lee, director, Aeronautical Ground Light Team, Incheon International Airport. “Under high-traffic conditions, reliable guidance systems such as those installed by Honeywell are critical to the pilots maneuvering around our congested airfield and taxiways. Put simply, this technology helps keep operations running smooth and helps make sure people are safe.”
Nallian, a specialist of collaborative solutions in logistics and air cargo, have joined with Luxembourg Airport to implement a cargo community system (CCS) at the airport.
With 893.090 tons of cargo in 2019, Luxembourg Airport is one of the most important cargo airports in Europe. To meet business needs and customer expectation, the CCS that open the neutral IT platform to all actors involved in international trade. This will enable real-time capturing and sharing of granular information regarding shipment processing, far beyond the traditional cargo data, it will empower all stakeholders involved to better plan and execute their processes and will drive efficiency and visibility with in-depth insights in performance.
In a first implementation phase in 2020, the application will prove its operability and added value for the cargo community. Upon the successful run of perishables and live animals shipments with a limited number of involved actors, namely Cargolux, LuxairCargo, Kuehne+Nagel, Arthur Welter and the public administrations concerned, the CCS shall be rolled out to all types of cargo and all companies that are interested to join.
“Lux-Airport is excited to implement, together with its cargo community, a data-sharing platform. With this decision lux-Airport demonstrates its commitment to support the airport cargo community and to foster the competitiveness and further growth of Luxembourg as a European multimodal logistics hub. Nallian has been selected because their solution demonstrates their core competence in cargo communities, using best practice processes frameworks, and enables for integration with other cargo communities,” René Steinhaus, CEO of lux-Airport, has said.
“We are proud to have been selected by lux-Airport, with whom we share a common vision on the importance and power of digitization and data sharing for air cargo. We are excited to help them realize their ambition to further develop the competitiveness of the airport and the logistics sector in Luxembourg as a whole,” said Jean Verheyen, CEO of Nallian.
Software solutions provider, IBS Software has announced a contract with Japan Airlines (JAL) for the implementation of iCargo, a comprehensive cargo sales, inventory and reservations system that manages air cargo operations and movement globally and powered with business capabilities that are tailored for the unique Japanese Air Cargo market.
The system will manage the entire operations process covering the import, export, transfers, warehouse operations and airports operations across the network. This will improve efficiency and reduce maintenance costs that were. iCargo is an integrated solution that supports the end-to-end business functions such as cargo reservations, rating, manifesting, import and export operations, warehouse management, revenue accounting, air mail handling and revenue management of cargo carrying airlines and ground handlers.
The system also follows the air cargo industry best practices and is fully compliant with global industry standards and initiatives such as Cargo iQ, C-XML, OneRecord, e-AWB and e-Freight in general.
“JAL is an iconic name in the airline industry and we are proud to welcome them to the iCargo community. Their aim is to drive efficiency improvements and iCargo, the leader and IT platform of choice for airlines especially in the Japanese market, will help their transformation into digital freight,” said Ashok Rajan, senior vice-president and head, cargo & logistics solution business, IBS Software.
Delmar International, recently announced the acquisition of Rotra, LLC (and Rotra Brokerage Services, Inc.).
Established in 1984, Rotra is a light asset Logistics Company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with offices in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, offering international freight forwarding, customs brokerage, and warehousing and distribution services. Rotra has enjoyed longstanding success servicing North American and European importers and exporters, with a wide range of logistics services specializing in the transatlantic trade.
“Our acquisition of Rotra is a strategic opportunity for Delmar to both increase our substance in the ever-important U.S. Midwest market and to further grow our presence in European markets. For over three decades, Rotra has successfully serviced and grown its customer base in this geographical sector. There is a strong cultural fit here with substantive synergy and opportunity for both entities and we couldn’t be more pleased to incorporate their family into ours,” said Robert Cutler, Delmar International CEO.
The transaction significantly raises the capabilities and size of Delmar’s USA footprint and workforce, which now exceeds two hundred employees, and operates from coast to coast with seven branches throughout the United States.
The fast-spreading coronavirus is steering consumers away from shopping malls and onto e-commerce platforms, according to the CEO of Dubai-based Dalma Capital.
Speaking to local news website, Zachary Cefaratti said the virus is likely to continue to drive online sales. His comment comes as Manrre Logistics Fund, which is managed by Dalma Capital, placed its shares into Nasdaq Dubai’s share depository to capitalize on the growing e-commerce industry.
“We think the coronavirus is a short term externality. It has no effect on what we’re doing with the fund and again the only impact that we can perceive is actually positive. I went to Dubai Mall this past weekend and even in the summer I don’t see Dubai Mall as empty as I saw it this weekend, so the fact is people still need to shop.
“If anything, actually in the very short term, the coronavirus affecting consumer behavior would more likely create a spike in e-commerce as people avoid shopping in malls, but again this is a very short term externality. It’s not something that affects our long term investment.”
He added, “If coronavirus continues to affect consumer behavior it will continue to drive more online sales… At the end of the day people still need to keep consuming goods, they still have demand for products and if anything if people want to avoid going to the malls, it’s good for us.”
The UAE has the highest e-commerce penetration rate in the MENA region at 4.2 per cent, followed closely by Saudi Arabia at 3.8 per cent, according to Bain & Company, while e-commerce spending in the GCC alone is expected to total $10.8bn by 2020, according to Dinarstandard’s MENASA eCommerce Landscape.
But Cefaratti said the spike in online sales as a direct result of the coronavirus are merely short term, and have no effect on the fund’s investment plan.
“I understand the coronavirus is something that is trending in the media right now but it is something that is having short term effects. It may trigger increased online shopping in consumer behaviour in the long run but it doesn’t have an effect on our investment outlook or investment horizon for this strategy,” he said.
Cefaratti also said now is the ideal time to invest in logistics and industrial real estate as interest rates and real estate prices drop to a near historical low.
“Interest rates are near their historical lows, they’re expected to remain low and are falling so finding yield in this market is difficult but borrowing is cheap so that’s reason number 1. Reason number 2 is asset prices in real estate in the region are at cyclical lows. It is a buyer’s market right now,” he said, adding that logistics and industrial real estate is experiencing favorable supply and demand conditions on the back of significant growth in e-commerce.
“Every billion dollars in e-commerce growth of sales lead to an additional 1.25 million sq. ft. of distribution facilities needed. At the current rate of e-commerce growth, there’s actually very favorable supply and demand conditions in the core segment that the fund focusses on which is logistics, industrial, real estate,” he said.
The Manrre fund, which was launched by Dubai-based Palmon Group in 2018, focuses on institutional-grade logistics and industrial properties across JAFZA, Dubai Investments Park and Dubai South.
In 2018 it reported a total annualized return of 12.5 percent, with a portfolio valuation of $72.33 million at the end of 2019. Of its portfolio total built-up area, logistics and industrial account for 70% of assets. Cefaratti said the fund has no plans to list its shares on the stock exchange as it continues to focus on private investors who understand the illiquidity premium of logistics and industrial assets.
“One of the benefits of the asset class we’re focusing on, on logistics and industrial assets, is that there’s an illiquidity premium. We actually are compensated by investing in an asset class that are illiquid. Logistics facilities as opposed to apartments or other real estate assets are illiquid. They require time to… you can’t buy them and sell them on a frequent basis.
“So as long as we’re focusing on extracting an illiquidity premium and offering the funds to sophisticated investors then the benefit is for us to remain private so for the current foreseeable future we’re focusing on sophisticated private investors,” he said.
Sharaf DG Energy, one of the leading solar energy solution providers in the UAE vows to tackle the issue of climate change head on, stating that the starting point should be within warehouses and factories across the region.
Manufacturing represents 54% of the world’s energy consumption and is responsible for 20% of global emissions – increase in efficiency can help to conserve energy and contribute to global CO2 reductions. Rising environmental issues and growing economic uncertainty means manufacturers must rework their current practices to ensure more is done to reduce harmful emissions and waste disposal that has a negative impact on the planet.
The logistics industry is becoming increasingly aware of its ecological impacts meaning warehouses and factories are the perfect starting place for companies to implement sustainable solutions. A combination of extensive unused rooftop space, the need for generating clean and reliable energy and the possibility of generating additional income makes warehouse ideal for solar.
The concept behind green logistics is to create measurable reductions in CO2 emissions due to daily operations from logistics and warehousing activities. To optimize operations, it is essential to create strategies that will lower costs and conserve energy.
“As the climate emergency accelerates, factories and warehouses must adapt and create new strategies with sustainability at the core of their business” says vice president of Sharaf DG Energy, Sanjay Dabur. “There is an opportunity to turn the negative into positive and use the current environmental climate as an opportunity to look internally – Middle East manufacturers should implement the necessary changes towards becoming more sustainable – streamline processes and begin to see this as an opportunity as opposed to a threat”.
“Installing solar panels on a warehouse is financially beneficial as well as a great way to utilise empty roof space” says Dabur. “The key advantage of using solar panels is that a warehouse can become more self-reliant by producing its own energy which can amount to significant savings over time”.
Sharaf DG Energy believes the companies that will successfully navigate the current environmental issues are those that embrace sustainable solutions across their factories and supply chains – improving operations whilst increasing sustainability means higher productivity and smoother processes that will in turn benefit all areas of the company.
By making the switch to solar, Dubai warehouses could benefit from extensive annual savings, security from producing their own clean energy that isn’t dependant on stability of the energy market, along with the biggest advantage being less pollution of the planet.
Sharaf DG Energy was founded in 2014 as a progressive and forward-thinking enterprise – bringing together global experience and local knowledge to create sustainable energy solutions.
Sharaf DG Energy hails from the wider Sharaf Group comprising of 47 companies with presence in 40 countries across MENA, Africa, India & Asia. The Sharaf Group continues to dominate sectors including Shipping & logistics, Industrial, real estate, travel & tourism, IT and financial & retail since its establishment in 1975.
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