BRUcargo - Good 2018 and a Busy 2019

Brussels Airport’s cargo division, BRUcargo has positioned itself during the past few years almost as a household name in air cargo with continued growth and pioneering of the now popular CEIV IATA pharma certification as well as their BRUcloud platform. Figures for 2018 are even better than the year before and BRUcargo’s chief, Steven Polmans, has set himself a few new goals for 2019.

Cargo growth in 2018 goes up
The airport turned over a total of 731,600 tons during 2018. This represents an increase of 7.5% over the previous year. Two factors were significant for the increase. There were increased volumes recorded on cargo loaded on passenger aircraft during the year. This was mainly due to the addition of new and extra long-haul flights being added from carriers such as Emirates, Cathay Pacific, and Hainan Airlines.
Local cargo loaded on the so called “trucks replacing aircraft” model increased significantly according to information published by the airport. This was due to a strong local demand for this service.
In total, 52% of shipments moved were export cargo and the remaining 48% import. It is interesting to note that imports increased by 18% whereas exports only grew by 1% throughout the year. Almost 50% of all exports were flown to Asia. African exports were 18% and to North America 22%. A strong Latin America growth was recorded for 2018 due to the new operations of LATAM Cargo and Avianca Cargo.

BRUcloud goes a step further
The open data sharing platform, BRUcloud, which was set up with BRUcargo, is going a step further by launching a new app titled Freight Management App 1.0. This is not just for local use only, but the applications and data sharing technology on the BRUcloud platform will be available in other air cargo communities and logistical hubs.