Almost one year after being founded the Air Cargo Community Frankfurt has presented its first results.
The “community,” which so far has 27 members on its books and which is said to represent the interests of all who are involved in the air freight process chain at Germany’s largest airport, claims that it continues to set the essential accents to promote and further develop Frankfurt as Europe’s number one cargo hub.
Closer cooperation with authorities
Improvement of processes at the airport is seen by the members as being one of the most important aspects of ensuring that the location stays on top.
In this respect the emphasis is on its present investigation into establishing the best means of documentation for the future, the committee explains.
An extensive dialogue has been established with customs authorities as well as the introduction of the new digital process, and this has in their view led to a reduction from 45 to 30 minutes for
the presentation of documents to customs.
Benchmarking other airports
Measuring the performance capacity of other airports is a project which is aimed at showing how fast and efficient Frankfurt itself is compared to its competitors within Europe.
With this in mind, the Air Cargo Community has developed a new benchmarking process.
This should lead automatically to ensuring FRA remains as a location with the highest possible service quality.
That at least is what the members are aiming for.
Christoph Schneider, Branch Manager of IJS Global, a member of the Air Cargo Community, put it in a nutshell by stating, “the quality of an airfreight location is often reflected in how reliably
the handling of difficult or special transports is handled. And it is in this area where Frankfurt is ideally placed.”
All want to be “pharma airport Nr. 1”
Brussels, Paris, Liege, London and other airports in Europe and around the world are placing much value on being seen as ideal locations for the handling of the lucrative pharmaceutical
business.
In this sense, Frankfurt is no exception.
Temperature- controlled ramp transport, GDP-certified storage areas of more than 7.000 square metres as well as a complete documentation process - these are aspects which FRA claims to have under
control and on constant offer to the pharma industry.
The community members see it as of being very important that they and the airport stay on top of these processes in order to reduce the present length of stay of shipments on the ramp from 90
minutes to between 45 and 60 minutes.
The FRA Air Cargo Community seems to have made some important steps forward during the twelve months of its existence.
Keeping up the momentum and positive dialogue with the airport managers and officials is going to be needed in order that the community gets what it needs and that its membership can
expand.
John Mc Donagh
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