Volumes on international routes at Pudong Air Cargo Terminal (PACTL) have proved very strong while domestic services have been weaker, vice president – production, sales & marketing, Christian Haug (pictured) says.
Total volumes are up 12.6 per cent between January and October, having handled 1.5 million tonnes, of which 1.4 million tonnes was international cargo and 82,838 tonnes was domestic.
International cargo is up 13.8 per cent in total, with stronger imports, though exports also registered a double-digit increase.
Domestic cargo was down 4.7 per cent, with outbound decreasing 8.4 per cent.
Haug comments: “2017 has been a very good year so far. International business is growing by more than 10 per cent, domestic is also OK but not so much of a factor yet. No doubt we also going to finish strong, for 2018 we are also quite optimistic.”
Haug reports all commodities are doing very well, saying: “We get a lot of seafood business inbound. We even had to increase our cool storage capacity to satisfy the demand.” PACTL has been developing projects elsewhere, launching PACTL Nantong Xingdong Airport Cargo Terminal (PACTL-NTG) in December 2016.
Nantong Airport has a 51 per cent shareholding, and PACTL controls the other 49 per cent.
In addition to cargo terminal services, it provides passenger baggage handling, aircraft loading and unloading, and freight forwarding.
Describing the first year of operations, Haug says: “We are satisfied with our company there. Very successful year, and we also had our first freighter charter flight in September. We still have to solve some issues especially regarding customs procedures between Shanghai and Nantong, we are working on it.”
For further expansion projects, Haug says PACTL looks both inside and outside China, though adds: “But our core business is PVG and with PACTL Nantong we already had a successful start. That said 2017 we focused on our core business but we keep our eyes open.”
As for the future, he says: “We will continue our path, constantly working on improvements of our PVG operations, focus on digitisation and look into option to further optimise our productivity. As said if options outside Shanghai are available, we are open to look into it.”
