Cargo Pulse

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.

In August, Air Canada Cargo celebrated a digital milestone: Its innovative e-Booking tool turned five.
Launched in 2015, Air Canada Cargo’s e-Booking was designed to offer an electronic booking experience for air freight akin to that of booking a passenger flight: visually appealing and easy to navigate.
“The user experience was at the heart of the design from the beginning,” explains Fred Opong-Agyare, Manager, Digital Initiatives.

“I use to send my trucks to the airport with no clarity on whether there was any cargo to pick up.” I was talking with a logistics stakeholder during MODEX 2020. “It was like a [crapshoot].” “Crapshoot” is my word. “For about one-third of the time, I left the airport empty.” These are words from one of Atlanta’s early adaptors who piloted the airport Cargo Community System.

In spring we launched myDHLi, our innovative one-stop customer portal aiming at leveraging digitalization for greater customer focus and efficiency at the same time. This is an objective that might not seem obvious at first glance. We are now several months into the portal’s roll out and this approach has proven right. Covering all needs across different methods of transport holds significant potential for improving not only customer satisfaction but also our daily business. 

Lots of kudos were – rightfully so – given to the many air cargo professionals who ensured goods kept flying the past months. But how to keep these workers safe in an environment that still heavily relies on physical touchpoints and the exchange of paper documents – while social distancing and limited contact should be the new normal? How to address this and, at the same time, getting ready for one of the biggest logistical challenges: the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines which requires maximization of capacity utilization? The answer to both challenges lies in one and the same solution: a hyper-connected, digital process.

In this tumultuous year we have seen much change. Now, when I go to a pub in England, I am welcomed at the door, asked to sanitize my hands, and then to scan a QR code using a government app to help contact tracing. At my table, I scan another code to see the menu, place my order, and pay for it. Everything is contactless. COVID-19 has been disruptive for my pub experience, but I see similar “low-touch” innovations in my professional life as well.