Hactl posts first growth in 16 months

HONG Kong Air Cargo Terminals Limited (Hactl) has – with its September traffic figures – posted its first monthly volume gain since July last year.September tonnage further stabilised from previous months with a total of 212,391 tonnes handled, registering a milder drop of 4.3 per cent year-on-year. Tonnage performance in the third quarter also showed clear improvement compared with last quarter, with a total of 620,358 tonnes handled, down 6.3 per cent year-on-year. Tonnage throughput for the first nine months of the year was 1,624,116 tonnes, representing a cumulative year-on-year drop of 16.3 per cent.Export volume was 117,045 tonnes for September and 328,305 tonnes for the third quarter, down seven per cent and 10.3 per cent year-on-year respectively. Cumulative export tonnage for the first nine months of the year was 842,484 tonnes, down 20.5 per cent against the same period of last year.Import volume continued to improve in September with a growth of 8.5 per cent, totalling 57,634 tonnes. Import from the US and Europe showed a optimistic growth of 9.3 per cent and 10.2 per cent respectively. Total import volume in the third quarter was 169,064 tonnes, up 3.2 per cent against last year whilst the cumulative import volume for the first nine months dropped 12.4 per cent year-on year with a total of 439,546 tonnes.The transshipment volume was 37,712 tonnes for September and 122,989 for the third quarter, registering a year-on-year decline of 12.1 per cent and 7.0 per cent respectively. Total transshipment volume for the first nine months was 342,086 tonnes, down 9.6 per cent year-on-year.Lilian Chan, Hactl’s general manager of marketing and customer service, said, “Further to the stabilising tonnage, we are delighted to see our commencement of partnerships with four new customers that launched new services to Hong Kong in the third quarter. This certainly instills great confidence in the market and we are thankful to the vote of confidence in Hactl by our customers. Looking forward, we expect further tonnage improvement hopefully in a pre-Christmas peak and we will, as always, deliver our consistently high quality services to our customers.”Hactl has signed up nine new airlines as customers this year, including Air Cargo Germany, Air Pacific Fiji and Yangzijiang Express Airlines.