Focus on time and quality

Luxair CARGO, the airfreight handling agent at Luxembourg airport is reinforcing its strategy to beat all odds. Namrata More speaks to Executive Vice President Laurent Jossart.

In 2013, around 21,000 tonnes of pharmaceutical products were processed there in 2013. With the recent GDP (Good Distribution Practices) certification, Luxair CARGO is now expecting a volume of 30,000 tonnes in 2014. Are expectations in line?
The expectations are in line. We are working on expansion of our pharma facilities. We have basically rearranged the space to accept more volumes. We are indeed having lots of interest from our customers and that has translated into additional volume. So, these are the investments and that is really encouraging for the future, I would say.

As the EVP of Luxair CARGO, what are your immediate focus areas?
First and foremost, we want to consolidate our entire functioning because we still have lot of things to do. We need to reinforce our strategy in terms of quality, time and cost reduction. And we are hiring new people for the time being. May be in the next two-three years, we will have enough skilled manpower.

How do you differentiate Luxair Cargo when compared to other players in Europe?
We are basically putting all the focus on time. So that we can basically handle the goods that are exported and imported, in a very limited period of time. We are currently working with some customers to reduce the cut-off time. But we would like to put even a bigger accent on quality to reduce any kinds of damaged freight. We position ourselves as an airport with very fast transit times. We try to differentiate ourselves from competitors that benefit from passenger and belly freight. Since we have full freighters, we need to be different. But the competition is becoming quite stiff when you have other airports in Europe proposing 24 hour operations.

What are your challenges?
The challenge is that we are trying to extend our client base. It is difficult when everyone is trying to chase the same client. We are also trying to provide more tailor-made solutions when it comes to pharmaceuticals. One of the challenges is that the cargo industry is suffering profitability, so we have pressure from customers to reduce costs. We just put a new organisation structure on June 1st to work on the productivity and improvement of the processes. We are expected to deliver more quality and at the same time reduce costs. The cargo industry is also lacking behind in automation and standardization.