Future of Logistics Session Offers Vision of Air Cargo Best Practices

The Future of Logistics conference has offered a vision of how to manage the present air cargo market showing how adaption and collaboration will keep air cargo flowing smoothly well into the future.

The session featured TLME Chairman Joe Beydoun (speaking on-behalf of Fast Logistics Cargo); Fabio Weiss, VP, Head of Air Freight MEA at DHL Global Forwarding; Qutaiba Al Manaseer, Government Affairs Director Middle East & Africa, AstraZeneca; Madhav Kurup, Regional CEO (MESA Region) – Hellmann Worldwide Logistics; Arne Roehrig, Head of Projects & Systems – DIMOS; Fabrice Panza - Manager Global Cool Chain Solutions - Etihad Cargo.

Moderator Lars Jensen began the session by asking the panellists what advice they would give to players in the air cargo sector on things that should do moving forward and what they should not, based on the last 18 months.

Responding to the question, Fabrice Panza started with a famous quote by Winston Churchill: "Never let a good crisis go to waste".

This illustrated what happened over the last 18 months when the passenger side of operations completely tanked but a positive outcome was on the cargo side, which took off thanks to the worldwide requirement of PPEs and pharmaceuticals.

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Airlines thought out-of-the-box to come up with creative and innovative methods to meet the huge surge in demand.

The second key learning, said Panza, was the importance of community and cooperation despite the competition that has existed between different players in the industry.

Fabio Wiess said that with the current situation of air freight capacities, end users and customers must "plan their supply chains well with reliable partners and to be cost sensitive but at the right time."

Arne Roehrig felt that it was the right time to use the pandemic to improve and innovate cargo systems.

He stated that the cargo industry, from the equipment point of view, has not changed much in the last 40 years and that it's now time to upgrade cargo systems and equipment to make them more flexible in order to better adapt to changes.

Agreeing with Arne, Joe Beydoun said that the one thing that the air cargo industry indeed needs to do is become more flexible, in terms of pricing, capacity and innovation.

As for what it should stop doing, Joe said they should stop taking business for granted as there is great competition out there today and the customer has many options.

AstraZeneca's Qutaiba Al Manaseer said that one key learning from the pandemic was the need for greater collaboration in the supply chain.

Two years ago, AstraZeneca was not even a vaccine manufacturer and thanks to their collaboration with Oxford University they have manufactured over 2 billion vaccine doses today – and counting.

Joe Beydoun concluded the discussion by saying that today, with vaccine distribution being so critical, efficient logistics has become an issue of life and death and this has created a sense of accountability that was there even earlier but today, it has become more real and significant than ever before.

You can view the whole conference on youtube here.

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