Paris stays on course
Just before the general strike that hampered public transport in France started, the ITJ slipped into Paris, where CDG airport, Europe’s second most important airfreight gateway, put on a rather insightful afternoon.
Around 80 people assembled in the modern ‘house of the environment’ at airport operator Aéroports de Paris ADP’s headquarters on 4 December, to listen to the annual freight forum’s review and outlook. Marc Houalla, the director of Charles de Gaulle airport, saw 2019 characterised by three main developments. 1) Ongoing overall growth in the passenger segment, as has already been observed for many years now (approximately +10 million over the past four years). 2) Consultations concerning terminal 4. It will rank the airport, which will then see 120 million passengers using it annually, amongst the six largest hubs worldwide. 3) Internal restructuring, which peaked with the nomination of Edouard Mathieu as director of development and customer relations.
Mathieu immediately put the local decline in freight volumes in perspective. According to ACI Europe, CDG handled 1.579 million t of freight in the first ten months of this year (–2.8%), which left it just behind Frankfurt, which handled 1.67 million t (–3.4%). Mathieu expounded on the hub’s strategy, predicting a high-risk future for airports that bank on full-freighters; he once more underlined CDG’s focus on co-loading capacities on long-haul routes, which are set to be massively expanded. “Our focus is mainly on Asia and China,” he specified, announcing ADP’s participation in the Air Cargo China trade event, scheduled to be held in Shanghai in June this year.
Another one of the airport’s development foci is on the way it deals with thermo-sensitive goods. Representatives from FCH and WFS presented CDG’s new pharmaceuticals warehouses. Andrea Gruber, Iata’s head of special cargo, informed the audience of the progress that has been made on the CEIV Fresh quality programme, which was launched in 2019. It is set to be implemented in Paris in the course of this year.
