ACS: record month reflects years of investment

Air Charter Service’s (ASC) recent strong growth is down to gains in market share and investment in infrastructure.
Earlier this week, ACS reported that June was a record month with 1,056 charters organised, representing the first time it had breached the 1,000 charter contract mark in a single month.
March and May were also record months.
The charter company said that it believed the increases were down to market share additions and represent the level of investment it has made over the last five years.
“We maintained and expanded our local teams when some companies were cutting back, we opened and expanded new offices and invested in technology internally,” the company told Air Cargo News.
“All the market needed to do was stabilise and we were confident that we would be in a good position to capitalise as we had the people and systems in place to react faster and offer better solutions than we ever have been able to before.”
ACS said there hadn’t been a particular single reason for the growth, although the west coast US port strike and the relief operation to Nepal had resulted in some extra demand.
Group chief operations officer Ruan Courtney said: “It is a great achievement to have organised 1,056 charters in a month – many of these consisting of more than one sector.
"That is an average of one contract signed every 41 minutes. Considering ten years ago we had only just passed the 1,000-charters-per-year mark, it is a testament to our significant growth in recent years.

“Despite the deterioration of the Russian market, which has hurt numbers in both our Moscow and St Petersburg offices, all our other European offices were up considerably year on year, as well as our North American operations, more than making up for the shortfall.

“Particular highlights include the performance of our cargo departments in the UK and the US, these have fuelled a large part of the growth in terms of numbers. Also our operations in Hong Kong and Beijing which, while less significant in terms of overall numbers, saw a 60% increase.”