Air cargo really seems to be making a comeback during the past twelve months.
Many airports and airlines have been reporting bumper figures for the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2016 despite a slower growth during last year’s first six months.
Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is no exception to this development.
Good volumes reached during 2016
That’s the message that the airport management gave to the press and during last Friday’s Board of Airline Representatives (BARIN) annual get together at the airport.
A total of 1.66 million tons of flown cargo were registered for the twelve-month period.
This was a 2.5% increase over 2015.
As was the case with many other European airports, December showed a noticeable upwards swing. The airport moved a total of 149,000 tons during the last month of the year, representing an
increase of 10.4% over the previous year.
January to November cargo throughput was up 1.8% y-o-y and the bumper December result pushed this to the 2.5% plus mark for the whole year.
Schiphol’s Cargo Director, Jonas van Stekelenburg is noticeably happy with the figures. He stated that: “we have launched a number of initiatives to enhance the experience of our pharmaceutic,
e-commerce and perishable customers, and our continued commitment to quality is having positive results,” he added.
Asian markets remain strongest for SPL
The airport cargo management stressed that the Asian markets remain the largest for SPL Cargo.
This despite the fact that both direct outbound and inbound tonnages to and from Asia dropped compared to the year before.
The number of non-stop flights between SPL and Asian cities has dropped, resulting in direct outbound tonnage to the area dropping by 7% to just over 290,000 tons.
However, flights to Asia which transited other European destinations such as Moscow, Baku and Azerbaijan, increased strongly, thereby resulting in a strong overall Asian cargo throughput from
SPL.
Direct flight imports from Asia also went down by 5% to almost the same figure as exports - namely 290,000 tons.
The Chinese metropole, Shanghai was the main Asian cargo destination.
New services to the Chinese cities of Xi’an and Ningbo were introduced during 2016.
Stekelenburg attributes the annual increase to a large extent to the upswing in e-commerce shipments on both outbound and inbound sectors.
The market to Africa remains a problem.
Exports dropped by a staggering 11%, down to only almost 55,000 tons, whereas imports from the continent, mainly perishables, went up by 2%.
Latin America and the Middle East areas both showed reasonable results, whereas North America figures stayed almost on par with those of the previous year.
All in all, not a bad year for Amsterdam Schiphol
John Mc Donagh