With a new pharma initiative under its wing and a drive to improve through the better use of data, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol certainly has its work cut out in the months to come.

Pharma Gateway Amsterdam, which was launched at the International Air Transport Association’s World Cargo Symposium in Berlin in March 2016, currently consists of 12 member companies – Air France-KLM-Martinair Cargo, Cyberfreight, De Jong Special Services,  dnata,  D.J. Middelkoop & Zn., IJS Global/GEFCO, Jan de Rijk Logistics, SGS Cargo Compliance Company, Swissport, VCK Logistics, Worldwide Flight Services and Yusen Logistics. The aim is for all of them to obtain IATA’s Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics certification, so that there will be a certified track from the shipper all the way to the consignee, including the unloading of aircraft, ramp transfers, first-line handling, second-line handling and haulage to the consignee or distribution centre.

“With this certification, you need organizational changes,” says Jonas van Stekelenburg, head of cargo at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. “For example, you need to appoint a quality manager if you don’t already have one. Now, three months later, everybody has passed their exams, which is very good. As a community, we have arranged for the training process to get everything in place for the certification. We’ve also seen other parties asking if they can join the community, but we’ve had to tell them to wait since the training is already ongoing.”

Van Stekelenburg says that, in keeping with the gateway’s tagline, “Qualified and transparent,” the next step will be to look into the community aspects in achieving a higher quality and improving transparency.

“If the pharma cargo goes from the airline to the handler and then to the forwarder or trucker, can we make the temperature of the goods or the security aspects more transparent?” he says. “Sometimes people use cameras for security purposes only, while others use them for track-and-trace. Now we have to be on one line and say to the shipper, ‘If you ship it over Schiphol, you’ll always know where your goods are and you can even see them.’ This is hard work, but I’m confident that we’ll come up with the right solutions.”

Schiphol is the largest freighter hub for Chinese freighters in Europe, with flights from Air China Cargo, China Cargo Airlines, China Southern Cargo and Yangtze River Express. Naturally, this was hugely beneficial to the airport’s Asian business overall.

“Now that things are less good, we are harmed more than others,” says van Stekelenburg. “But I must say that, although it’s a pity that China is growing less than before, they’re still growing. For Europe, a 3-5% growth would be spectacular. Japan gave us lots of business in the 80s and 90s, with the Yamaha distribution centre in Amsterdam. It might not be as hip and modern as AliExpress and others, but it’s still very good business. Even if we see a dip from China, which I do not expect, there is business underneath it which is very good.”

Apart from pharma, one business segment which is doing particularly well is e-commerce. In 2015, Schiphol handled approximately 1.6 million tonnes of cargo and mail, which was 0.7% less than the tonnage in 2014. But, according to van Stekelenburg, the number of declarations at customs actually went up by 15-20%.

“So something’s going on and there’s a shift from bigger shipments to smaller ones,” he says. “I think we’ve not seen the end of it and we’ll see good growth on the e-commerce side.”

In the months ahead, the airport will work on improving the service quality and making things cheaper and more efficient. Van Stekelenburg says he and his team think that data plays a very important role in achieving that across the board.

“It’s not easy because every player has its own optimized set,” he says. “We need to make it work over the various parts and we need to make our feeder operations more efficient. The aim is to have optimized processes by making better use of data.”

Schiphol already has various projects in place. For example, van Stekelenburg says that the airport is working with Air France-KLM-Martinair Cargo on the carrier’s road-feeder operations in Germany.

“It used to be optimized per party in the chain, but now we’re looking for just one data entry,” he says. “Every other player in the chain should make use of that first entry. But it’s tricky, because what is the first data entry? Is it the pre-booking, the booking, or some other admin aspect? Everyone defines it differently.”

The data has to be shared with every link in the chain to realize all the potential benefits. Van Stekelenburg says that this would even help ease labour issues such as truckers running into problems with their working-hour regimes because of a delayed flight.

“If we make all the aviation data readily available to truckers, handlers, forwarders and shippers, then they can just look for it themselves,” he says. “For every partner in the chain, there will be pressure to say what they will do with that data.”

Overall, Schiphol is confident about its place in the market and the growth potential it has.

“The question is how world trade is going to be – if there is an increase in world trade, we will benefit from it more than others,” says van Stekelenburg. “Of that I’m sure.”

By Jeffrey Lee

Asia Cargo News | Hong Kong