Air Menzies International (AMI) says rising demand for e-commerce is helping make up for difficulties faced in Australia’s mining states.
AMI vice president for the South Pacific, Geoff Young tells Air Cargo Week (ACW): “The mining states have faced difficult markets throughout 2015 to date, and this has knocked on to their freight activity. We have been working hard to counteract the challenges in our market by opening up new revenue streams.”
Young explains to ACW the company has seen an eight per cent growth in tonnage across the region while express jobs are up by 95 per cent, helped by its online click2Ship service.
Young notes: “The latter provides all-inclusive online quotes, which are then easily converted to bookings. This is very new for the Australian market, and proving very successful as it saves our agents customers time, and enables them to give their own customers fast quotes to secure business.”
He has high expectations for click2ship. Young says: “We expected continued strength in our online express platform click2ship, particularly as we plan to expand it into domestic freight services.”
AMI has doubled the size of its Sydney facility and opened operations in Darwin and Adelaide. Young says: “We have just doubled the size of our Sydney operation to accommodate pent up demand, and pave the way for our growing e-commerce support activity.”
Young continues: “Our new state-of-the-art Sydney facility provides over double the capacity of the former base, necessary to accommodate the pace of growth we are experiencing in this market. We have invested in additional handling equipment, and this expands our capabilities into accepting heavy and outsize shipments.”
The capabilities in Sydney meant within days of the facility opening, AMI arranged the transport of an executive helicopter to London.
He adds: “We have also opened operations in Darwin and Adelaide, which give us important local presence in these markets, and they are stimulating additional business.”
Young says now AMI has facilities in Darwin and Adelaide, it has facilities at every major airport in Australia and New Zealand. He tells ACW: “Our next phase is to consolidate our position and grow from these bases, both by additional market penetration and also through the provision of added-value services.”
Young says Melbourne has been doing well. “Melbourne has enjoyed significant momentum, welcoming new customers to the AMI experience of highly competitive rates, service quality, solid reliability and absolute commercial neutrality.”
The bar for agents operating their own bond in Australia is very high because of rigorous border controls, designed for safety, economic and environmental reasons. Young says it took five months to launch its Adelaide operation, despite AMI having had a presence in Australia for a number of years.
He adds: “Fortunately for our customers, as we had done all the compliance spade work, they can now benefit from a branch network that spans the country, and from our trade-only neutrality to help them set up shop in places such as Darwin, Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane.”
