What shippers really want: Airfreight’s true customers speak out

What’s next?

Those integrators that Baertschi refers to have a unique advantage, and one that shippers pay a premium for – they own all the components of the supply chains, from vehicles to warehousing, and that’s just not feasible for most specialized companies in the business. That also means that, by controlling the data from A to Z, integrators communicate seamlessly at every transfer point (and most of the way in between).

But, forwarders aren’t going anywhere. According to Brandon Fried, executive director of the U.S. Airforwarders Association, they fill a market demand that nobody else can. “Forwarders work in a world of hands-on expertise,” Fried said. “They solve complex problems.”

That logic certainly applies to the rest of the air cargo supply chain that isn’t called UPS, FedEx or DHL. That’s where the CAS comes into the picture. “If you ship one kilogram with the integrators, you get door-to-door in a few days,” Mellin said. Freight forwarders generally take at least twice this time and often longer, raising the question, “Why?” Mellin contends that, unlike the integrators, forwarders don’t own their own assets and, thus, don’t control the information from end-to-end.

The industry has responded across the board, with forwarders and carriers making digitization a strategy. Individual players are stepping up their game, but all it takes is one weak link, and the whole model falls apart.

That digitization response translates into satisfied customers. Alex Nieuvpoort, order-to-delivery director for Sandvik Machining Solutions, said that his company “does not have problems with handling of its [air] shipments.” That said, he encouraged the industry to pay more attention to “customer demand and requirements.”

The solution, it seems, is to get the rest of the industry to act more like the integrators, at least when it comes to visibility and data sharing. “That requires airlines to view their offering as an end-to-end solution,” Nieuvpoort said. “More and more airfreight is moving to belly-load on pax flights. This is used as a filler and not viewed as a ‘product’ by the airline. There are too many parties involved that are not connected enough to get a product to its final destination in a transparent way. Since other modes of transports offer better transparency, the airfreight industry might continue to lose ground.”