Wilhelm Althen, retiring chairman of Lufthansa Cargo, which introduced time-definite services and a programme of partnership with forwarders in 1998, predicts rapid change over the next two years, with mergers, takeovers, new forms of partnership and major e-commerce influence.
Althen says the year will see Lufthansa move to much closer co-operation with a handful of its 15 global and local forwarder partners, integrating IT systems to offer door-to-door logistics solutions to shippers. He also hints at co-operation with DHL, in which Lufthansa has a passive 25% stake, and with Deutsche Post, the German post office, which has made acquisitions among forwarders and logistics companies in the past year, culminating in its purchase of AEI, one of the world's largest forwarders, in November.
Althen envisages flexibility among such partners, with companies co-operating on door-to-door logistics solutions for one customer and competing against each other for the next. "There will not just be one logistics solution, but many," he says. "We might have one partner for automotive traffic and another for hi-tech."
For smaller customers and ad hoc traffic, Althen predicts a shift to direct selling over the Internet. He says Lufthansa will be prepared to sell direct to shippers over the heads of forwarders if there is a demand.
This is a controversial statement given the intense criticism of KLM for approaching shippers directly three years ago. "Larger customers will continue to want door-to-door solutions, so for them the partnership approach will work better," says Althen. "But smaller customers who ship four or five times a year don't need such solutions and, for these, booking over the Internet is ideal."
Other carriers seem to be following Lufthansa's lead. In November, Northwest Airlines announced it would join the three-tier Select system created by KLM/Alitalia, and in the same month, Air France announced a new four-tier cargo product, including Cohesion - joint logistics approaches tailored to individual shipper needs to be offered in partnership with forwarders - and Equation, a time-definite offering.
Emirates has also introduced time-definite products and has inaugurated a computer system accessible to all parts of the supply chain, from shipper to consignee.
One question left unanswered by such initiatives is where they leave Cargo 2000, an International Air Transport Association (IATA)-sponsored attempt by leading forwarders and airlines to create an integrated door-to-door system for air freight. In September, Cargo 2000 postponed a decision on a systems company to provide the IT backbone for the system, although it promised a decision in January.
Supporters still insist the Cargo 2000 system will go ahead, but impatience is evident at Lufthansa. "We were one of the companies pushing for Cargo 2000, but we have to see who is willing to invest," says Althen. "It seems as if it is only a handful. My belief is that it is not the biggest but the fastest to change who will win in the future. At Lufthansa, we can't afford to wait for the slowest ones."
Source: Airline Business
