Find a niche..raise quality

NICHE market exploitation is the name of the game right now. With reducing amounts of general air cargo about, sharp organisations are looking instead for yield-retention opportunities.

Not for them the horizontal, pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap business model redolent of the past three decades.

Over a number of years, some of these clever operators (a handful of carriers in particular but, more recently, some airports and forwarders too) have become adept at exploiting vertical markets.

Like the integrators, they have done so by building precision and quality of service into their air cargo DNA. It’s what makes them reliable and means they can achieve higher yields and therefore continue investing in their business.

This trend goes some way to explain why there appears to be a surprising amount of new air cargo investment going on as I write this.

Whether it is establishing a bespoke hub facility for moving animals by air; focusing on a hi-tech, temperature-sensitive new terminal for the safe handling of life-science and perishables shipments; introducing those less weighty state-of-the-art containers (which can tell you not only where the cargo currently is but also what it had for breakfast) – the list of enhanced infrastructure projects gets bigger and seemingly more intelligent by the week.
Barely a day goes by without news of some fresh development reaching my inbox. Entire new airports are under construction, fleets of factory-fresh, cheaper-to-run aircraft are being announced.

Where will it all lead? To an industry on which customers can truly depend. And then, they’ll start coming back . .