Warehousing at Airports a Big Challenge: dnata

Moderator Lars Jensen began the Air Cargo Session by asking the panellists from their company’s perspective what is the status of the supply chain today? What is working? What is not working? And what has changed for them in the last six months?

Steve Allen, Group CEO of dnata, first congratulated everyone present at the conference for "keeping the supply chain going" and minimising the impact of the pandemic on operations in the region.

Going on to then offer a global perspective Mr Allen said a lot freight has moved from sea to air putting a strain on air cargo operations and yet, at the same time providing the industry with an opportunity to grow rapidly.

Another evident impact of the pandemic has been that freighters have been able to fly to hub airports where they have not been able to get slots earlier and lot of air cargo has been concentrated around hubs like Dubai, Amsterdam and Chicago putting a lot of strain on warehouse capacities there.

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This combined with unpredictability of flights and movement of cargo coming in and going out of warehouses has made purely throughput-based warehouses into virtual storage facilities. Mr Allen said that dnata has been "encouraging" freight forwarders to pick up their cargo as quickly as possible.

Mr Allen added that another impact of the pandemic has been the rapid adoption of new technologies in operations and dnata was trialing new technologies around the world from drones in warehouses to digital cargo booking and collection systems.

In this way, concluded Mr Allen, dnata was looking to refine their processes and achieve greater efficiencies to meet future challenges.

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