Fraport Cargo Services, the cargo handling arm of Rhine-Main airport manager Fraport AG, celebrated its 10th anniversary on Tuesday 3rd of June with a rocking summer garden party held on the outskirts of Frankfurt Airport. CargoForwarder Global was among the invitees.
FCS decided to thank customers, officials and other service regulators and handlers for the support and loyalty shown over the past ten years.
Many competitive members of the handling community were also present at the event in order to celebrate this anniversary.
The event was held in the gardens of a building that houses Fraport‘s legal department and which is situated just west of the airport in the grounds of the old Ticona factory complex.
Kicking off at 3 p.m. and ending way after 10 p.m., the party proved to be a great success.
Live rock music throughout the evening along with international food and plenty of “the wet stuff,“ along with varied games and competitions, kept the visitors busy throughout the evening.
In these days of so called regulatory restrictions, it was good to see the staff of airlines, freight agents, officials and other handling entities mixing freely and enjoying the party arranged by FCS.
Fraport Cargo Services was formed in 2004 with the merger of the cargo division of Fraport Ground Services and Tradeport Frankfurt.
The merger was deemed necessary in order to aim at making FCS a more efficient and high quality service provider at Frankfurt airport in light of increasing international handling competition and
to cope with the then expected boom in air cargo transport.
Various divisions such as operations or IT were totally restructured.
This seems to have paid off.
Cargo handled rose by over 35 percent from around 332,000 tons in 2003 to a total of 450,000 tons in 2013 and staff have also increased by 20 percent
Andreas Helfer, who along with Diane Schoeneich co- manages FCS stated, “we have become slimmer, faster and stronger. Our customers also benefit from this: the handling charges they pay have
fallen by 20 percent since we were established.”
FCS customer base is long and varied and has so called “long term” clients such as Emirates and China Airlines on its books.
Waiting and handling times for agents and trucks are one of the priorities on FCS management’s list. This, according to information on hand, is being put into motion with the introduction of the
“Fair@Link” Cargo Community System, which CargoForwarder intends to report more on in the coming months.
Ten years have flown by fast! Let’s see what the coming ten will bring at FCS.
It would maybe be worthy to note that the much publicized issue of a possible investment in FCS by DNATA, the Emirates Airlines’ handling daughter company, seems to have faded somewhat into the
background. A Fraport spokesman was quoted, when asked by CargoForwarder Global that “the status is unchanged and there are no new developments in this area at the present time.”
Would be a heavy birth if it came about.
There was understandably no mention of this at the FCS party.
Look forward to the 20th anniversary party.
John Mc Donagh
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