DHL has contracted additional air capacity for freight shipments from Asia in response toincreasing demand that has now returned to pre-crisis levels.
The company said today it has enlarged its international air freight network by addingadditional consolidation services into Middle East and Africa and increasing the number ofgateways. Additional measures have also been taken to enhance block space and part charteragreements with commercial passenger and pure cargo carriers.
”Demand for air freight was the first to turn up amid the global economic recovery, driven bybusinesses restocking their inventories. Airfreight has risen back to levels before the economiccrisis. On top of it, full ships and shortage of containers out of Asia forced some shippers toswitch part of their goods from ocean to air freight,” said Charles Kaufmann, CEO NorthAsia & Senior Vice President, Air Freight, North Asia Pacific, DHL Global Forwarding, in aspeech at the 7th China Air Cargo Summit in Beijing.
“Based on our outlook for the year, we’re taking the necessary measures to bolster our airfreight capacity – increasing the number of block space agreements on commercial carriers andmaintaining strong collaboration with Chinese national carriers,” said Kelvin Leung, CEO, DHLGlobal Forwarding North Asia Pacific. “Trade lanes from Asia have seen a strong rebound in exports.Freight volume rose by 95% in January and has now recovered to pre-crisis levels. As the world’ssecond-largest economy, China will fuel the air freight growth, with freight volumes carried byChinese airlines expected to see double-digit growth this year.”
Asia will lead the global air freight recovery as the majority of the air freight takes place ororiginates in the region. China, in particular, will be a key factor for growth, DHL said.
Intra-Asia trade is forecasted to grow at 6.2% CAGR fuelled by the increase in Chineseconsumption and increasing intra-Asia trade with China. Similarly, air cargo volumes between NorthAmerica and China are expected to grow 8.0% CAGR between 2010-2019, and 6.8% CAGR for the sameperiod between Western Europe and China. Excluding China, CAGR growth of air cargo volumes betweenrest of Asia and North America is projected at 5.4%, and 5.2% for air cargo growth volumes betweenWestern Europe and Asia during the same period.
Based on comparison of Freight-Tonne-Kilometers (FTKs) over the past 12 months, overall airfreight volumes increased 28.3%, of which 60% of the volume increase was carried by Asia Pacificairlines, according to IATA.
“While air freight volumes continue on an upward trend, air freight operators, particularly inAsia, will cautiously plan their flights and cargo capacity in the market, to avoid an oversupply.The imbalance of the supply and demand will continue into Q2 and Q3 this year. Thus, the mainchallenge for us in the coming months is to acquire sufficient capacity at reasonable cost tofulfill customers’ demand for our air freight services,” Kaufmann added.
