Digital Air Cargo Forum

As a dedicated freighter hub, Liege Airport and the Cargo Community has focused very hard on dedicated infrastructure and specialized services for our 5 key products: Perishables, Live Animals, Outsized Cargo, Pharma and E-commerce.

18% growth. That’s what e-commerce is looking at in 2020. That’s robust, even in the face of a pandemic-fueled recession, social justice protests and a contentious political environment that have made the business environment uncertain.

E-commerce has continued its exponential growth over the last five years and has proven to be a business model that drives business-to-consumer (B2C) activity, which is significantly different to the traditional airfreight forwarder concept of business-to-business (B2B). It has seen vertical integration by those positioned as integrators where controlled end-to-end pickup and delivery are integral service delivery items.

Another result of COVID-19, which became one of the big stories of 2020, was the acceleration in the growth of e-commerce shipments. Prior to the pandemic, e-commerce was growing twenty percent (20%) since 2008 while global trade volumes remained flat. The e-commerce supply chain proved its mettle to deliver groceries and toilet paper to the American people for over 10 months.