‘There must be a better way’
German air cargo and logistics companies, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider cargo.one and carrier Lufthansa, are making major headway in the air cargo industry’s long-bemoaned need for implementation of digital platforms in everyday processes.
As experts in tech, cargo.one founders Moritz Claussen, Oliver T. Neumann and Mike Rötgers heard about this need for technology in the industry and did some internships with freight forwarders and airlines to learn what has needed and what the missing holes in existing tech there were.
During these internships, the founders learned that one of the main processes both cargo airlines and freight forwarders struggled with was being able to quote and book freight capacity at efficient, competitive and transparent prices.
“One day, when we sat with a freight forwarder, we received an email from a shipper asking for a price for a shipment of milk powder he wanted to send from Frankfurt to Shanghai,” Claussen said. At the time, he said, the forwarder blank copied 12 airlines and general sales agents – a common practice across the industry – but most flights had no available capacity, as this was during the height of 2017’s airfreight demand boom.
“Sitting there, we looked at each other and thought, there must be a better way,” Claussen said.
With this experience, Claussen, Neumann and Rötgers founded Berlin-based cargo.one in mid-2017. They launched the cargo.one digital freight booking platform, which allows users to view and book airlines’ available freight capacity instantaneously via a digital app.
From the time IATA hosted its annual symposium in Singapore in February this year to July, the number of carriers and forwarders on the platform has grown from 150 to more than 250 and continues to grow. Some current users of the platform include Lufthansa Cargo, JAS Forwarding and CargoLogicAir.
According to cargo.one, it is now able to bring airlines onto its platform relatively quickly. When the carrier says it is ready on its commercial and legal sides for the integration it generally takes four to eight weeks to do the actual technological aspects of the integration. cargo.one says it currently offers six different integration methods for onboarding carriers onto the platform.
“The larger hurdle is more the corporate mindset,” said Claussen. However, he noted this resistance is changing as most airlines now see technological modernization of their processes as crucial to ensuring maintenance and sustainable growth of their operations in today’s economy.
Lufthansa Cargo AG, too, is working to increase efficiency in operations by swapping physical processes for digital tech through its eFreight initiative. The initiative replaces paper documents in the air cargo industry with standardized electronic messages and regulated data exchange, and supports e-air waybills (eAWB), electronic consignment security declaration (eCSD), electronic House Manifests (eHM) and electronic Dangerous Goods Declarations (eDGD).
Lufthansa is also currently testing a service called “PreCheck” which enables electronic document processing of master and house air waybills (FWB and FHL messages) prior to shipment. With the service, customers will get an immediate response about their content quality, which offers the opportunity to correct and resend FWB and FHL messages forthwith.
According to Lufthansa Cargo Chief Commercial Officer Dorothea von Boxberg, the company is also currently testing its PreCheck service at several airports, including Frankfurt (FRA), Munich (MUC), Nuremberg (NUE), Stuttgart (STR), Milano Malpensa (MXP), Milano Linate (LIN) and Vienna (VIE).
The service in intended to eventually supplement the company’s overall eFreight initiative and will make waiting time a “thing of the past,” according to von Boxberg, though she did not say when the PreCheck service is expected to launch.