Less than two years after Abu Dhabi-based Maximus Air grounded its fleet of A300-600s and began a period of restructuring, the specialty heavy-lift carrier has re-emerged this week with plans to offer door-to-door delivery for cargo of almost any size, plus freight forwarding services for air, sea and land transport modes.
Maximus Air, known chiefly as one of the largest airfreight charter operators in the Middle East, is re-inventing itself as a “one-stop shop” that will be able to ship “parcels of all shapes and sizes” through its network of partners, said CEO Mohamed Ebrahim Al Qassimi.
The door-to-door forwarding service will have “a simple pricing structure and competitive rates,” he said. Besides airfreight, the service will also handle forwarded seafreight, road and rail transport, FCL/LCL and break-bulk loads around the Arabian Peninsula region in the first phase of the operation. The service will also include warehousing, supply chain management, insurance and packaging services.
Al Qassimi said the new service will not replace the heavy-lift operations currently performed by the single An-124 (pictured) and two Il-76 aircraft, which the carrier ACMI-leases from Ukraine Air Alliance. “Naturally, oversized cargo will remain at the core of everything we do,” he said. Maximus, operating since 2005, specializes in chartering flights for outsized and dangerous goods, live animals, VIPs and humanitarian freight.
“Instead of focusing on 80 percent of the market for a 20 percent share, we aim to focus on 20 percent of the market and attract an 80 percent share,” Al Qassimi explained. “For the first six months, we will be mainly focusing on existing clients to target their imports and offer them value-added services for freight.”
The Maximus Air CEO said he expects the new service to reach profitability in the first half of this year, “with further market segmentation earmarked for 2016.” The carrier is expecting an average annual growth of 4 percent in airfreight demand between the Middle East and Europe over the next 20 years.
To handle this demand, Al Qassimi said “a new cargo terminal has been proposed that would handle around 2.5 million tonnes of air freight by 2025” – most of which will be carried to various European destinations.