The Cargolux Group registered an 8.7% increase in its freight tonne-kilometres in 2015, according to the airline’s results for the year.

Cargolux transported a total of 889,652 tonnes of freight across its network in 2015, a year-on-year increase of 7.4%. It also recorded a net profit of US$49 million, compared to US$3 million in 2014.

“It is a sign of our company’s strength that, despite the energy we needed to achieve a CWA compromise, we managed to achieve a significant boost in our performance and a healthy profit, contrary to most of our European competitors,” said Dirk Reich, president and CEO of Cargolux. “While this excellent result benefitted from a reduction in fuel costs, it is in large part due to the hard work of our people, as well as our strategy and the corresponding measures that we began to introduce in 2014 in order to reduce our costs.”

The average load factor stood at 65.9% for 2015, and the group’s market share increased 0.1 percentage points to 3.8%.

The Cargolux board approved a US$77 million investment in January 2016 for the new joint venture Cargolux China, which is expected to launch operations in 2017.

The carrier currently operates a fleet of 13 Boeing 747-400Fs and 13 747-8Fs, including four for its Italian joint venture Cargolux Italia.