Page 6 - The STAT Trade Times September 2022 Issue

coverstory

Niklas Adamsson, chief operating officer,
Envirotainer, whose expertise is in highly spe-
cialised temperature-controlled ULDs, wants
to see the positive side of the market as pas-
senger traffic is coming back and along with
that more capacity for ULDs. He noted that
there was an efficient system of ULD logistics
among the airlines pre-pandemic.
"The airlines used to help each other in
repositioning the ULDs. The system was
operational and efficient. With the world
opening up, the inefficiencies introduced by
the pandemic are also going away," he said.
While talking about the way things are
management and a global network, accord- heading now, Liao expressed his concern
ing to Frank Muehlenkamp, director of global about the lack of ULD tracking across
operations at Jettainer, which has a global the supply chain, particularly beyond the
network of 100,000 ULDs. “Especially in this airports. “ULDs are not only moved between
year’s summer peak season and in conjunc- airlines and their ground handling service
tion with staff shortages at many airports, Treat ULDs with providers. Today, it's across the air cargo sup-
this was a very demanding task,” he said. ply chain including the shippers and freight
Zhi Yong Liao, senior manager, cargo due care and respect. forwarder customers. So, we need to extend
safety & ULD, International Air Transport As- traditional ULD control to the whole air cargo
sociation (IATA) also identifies the imbalance Sometimes it's too supply chain,” he noted.
as the main pain point in the global ULD easy for a handler just
asset management right now. Visibility beyond airports
Liao is also responsible for the upcoming to take a knife and cut “Even today, it is still a pain point that airlines
IATA World Cargo Symposium’s spotlight often receive the report that they don't know
session on ULDs under the Safety & Security the net to get the load where the ULDs are, especially when the ULD
stream, happening on September 27 to 29, rather than unclipping it control function has been outsourced to the
2022 in London. ground service provider and also when the
He informed The STAT Trade Times that properly. ULD is lent to the freight forwarder or ship-
some airports believe that airlines are using pers outside the airport,” he added.
more space for ULDs than they need and Ross Marino It is also important for airlines to have a
reported that these airports are consider- Unilode Aviation Solutions very high level of ULD control and transpar-
ing charging airlines for the ULD storage. rectly. “Don't worry about ULD logistics. Let ency to have flexibility in the types of ULDs
“We were told that airports have started to us take care of that,” he said. used in various routes, even, for example,
consider a fine as the result of the inventory Marino also reported that during this pan- in the onward compared to return. “For
imbalance,” he notes. demic, and the supply chain crisis, they've example,” Liao said, “One pain point that we
To improve the situation, Liao put forth also been able to grow short-term leasing, often hear from the airlines is the difficulty in
two recommendations: improve the ULD a new part of their business. “You can lease repositioning the main deck containers used
control across the air cargo supply chain ULDs, mainly pallets, on a very short-term in freighters as most of the airline partners
and improve the accuracy of ULD inven- basis like for a week or a couple of weeks or a are flying passenger flights with cargo on the
tory forecasting. month or few months and then you return it lower decks.”
Steve Townes, president and CEO of ACL to us. We've got over 100 customers who are Responding to the lack of visibility beyond
Airshop, thinks that there will always be using the short-term lease. It's enabled them airports, Marino pointed out where it goes
some sort of market inefficiencies, so they to meet those peaks,” he added. wrong. "A lot of the big shippers and big
maintain their speed of responsiveness and Thorsten Riekert, chief sales officer of freight forwarders take big stocks of ULDs
large deployed inventory to help clients in Jettainer noted that, especially for airlines on off the airport and sometimes you never
surge periods. a growth course, outsourcing ULD manage- see these pallets again for many weeks or
Ross Marino, chief executive officer of ment is now an even more attractive alterna- months," he said.
Unilode Aviation Solutions, which has tive. “As efficient control means we need Recently in Luxembourg, one of Unilode’s
145,000 ULDs out there in its global net- around 20 percent fewer ULDs for a full sup- staff members went to a freight forwarder
work, pointed out the inefficiencies with ply. And this surplus is directly available for and located up to 200 pallets stored at their
airlines owning their own ULD stock which further growth. Especially in the Asia-Pacific location and they had to retrieve them.
includes, along with repositioning, ULDs markets, we see the potential for outsourced Regarding how they solve this issue,
getting damaged due to handling incor- ULD management,” he said. he noted constant communication with
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