09-10/2019 Blooming and wilting aviation
Germany cultivated a mere 323 ha of roses in 2017, which corresponds to 450 football pitches – on which the German team didn’t exactly cut a cavalier figure at the football World Cup in Russia last year either. So lovers in Germany as well as in the rest of Europe, North America, Asia and Australia were happy to have roses imported from distant climes available on 14 February. Of all the modes of transport, only aviation can ensure that the flowers continue to look nice after their sale. Lufthansa Cargo and Emirates SkyCargo each transported around 900 t of roses around the world, with the Emiratis chartering planes to fly flowers directly from Quito to Los Angeles and from Nairobi to Sydney for the first time. It comes as no surprise that Air France KLM Cargo handled 3,300 t of roses, as the airline operates a Dutch hub just a stone’s throw from the world’s largest flower exchange in Amsterdam. Latam Cargo is the industry leader in terms of perishable flowers, however. It is based slap-bang in the middle of the South American production region, and in the 25 days before Saint Valentine’s Day it flew no less than 9,000 t of cut flowers out of Colombia and Ecuador.
You’ll come across all of these countries in our Special supplement, which will be distributed at the São Paulo intermodal trade fair – not only in English, French and German, as usual, but also in Portuguese and Spanish.
In the main issue you can read about how good a year 2018 was for the airfreight industry. What the rest of 2019 holds in store can’t be said two months into the year. Airbus terminated its A380 programme; the impact of Brexit is unclear. At least the flowers will be out again soon in spring.
Enjoy them when they come, and in the meantime enjoy this issue of the ITJ!
Andreas Haug
Head of airfreight
