TIACA Air Cargo Forum (ACF) in Toronto October 16-18 premier air cargo event in the Americas during 2018.

     The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) intends to further build the brand while also pursuing strategic projects that improve supply chain flows for all air cargo stakeholders.

TIACA CEO Scholte Is Action

     Sebastian Scholte, CEO of Jan de Rijk Logistics, moves onward into his two year tenure as TIACA chairman.
     He replaced Sanjiv Edward, Head of Cargo Business at Delhi International Airport. Speaking exclusively to Flying Typers, Scholte said that under his leadership TIACA will take a multi-pronged approached to growing the Association’s brand and building its role as a facilitator of improved air freight supply chain efficiency and resilience.

Setting Up A Pattern

“Strategy is about allocating your resources to the things that give the best results,” he said. “And the best result would be benefitting our industry and our members. And it should be achieved in a financially sustainable way.”
Scholte has now set up a think tank of 15 industry leaders to help finalize a strategy for TIACA with the aim of benefitting members and engaging more with stakeholders.

Two Way Dialogue

“I’ve been talking to many people in the industry - members and non-members.
“A lot of people are passionate about TIACA.
“It’s a very strong brand, and not only for now but also for the future.
“People say cooperation in the air cargo supply chain is not working as well it could and it would be perfect for TIACA to step in because we are the only organization that represents the whole air cargo supply chain. I’m not saying we will go down that route, but I envision that TIACA will play a facilitating role to help improve supply chains.”

CSG Launch For Example

Illustrating the point, in October TIACA launched its Cargo Service Quality (CSQ) initiative at its executive summit in Miami. CSQ is designed to give an overall assessment of all service providers in a given airport location as a means of generating qualitative data for users.
“I think that, and I may be dreaming a little bit, but it would be wonderful if TIACA could somehow become Trip Advisor for air cargo,” he said. “If you’re a shipper and you say, ‘OK I want to ship pharmaceuticals, what are the best airports?’ then you will have a resource – a ratings system for airports and service providers.
“Then if you go to an airport community, you can see how the handling agents are rated, what kind of facilities they have for example for Pharma. It’s not only that you have the customers evaluating the suppliers, but not why not the other way around as well?”

Shippers Advisory Panel

Mr. Scholte sees the initiative as working similarly to TIACA’s Shippers Advisory Council, which has been working on how best to improve information sharing and communication flow through the supply chain.
“We initiated this about two years ago and they have come up with a logistics data backbone which basically improves the whole air cargo supply chain and especially the information available,” he said.
“This is where we want to go, we want information sharing throughout the whole chain so that we are more aligned with each other so we can better plan and be prepared and therefore reduce errors, reduce costs, and improve transparency in the supply chain.

Umbrella Affect

“In future I see TIACA bringing all air cargo parties together, under one umbrella, to help make supply chains perform better.”
“I think if we have a complete open source of information for everybody where everybody can see everything, supply chains will function far better and more transparently. There’s so much more room for improvement.
“I see TIACA playing a bigger role in this way and I think that’s the only way to success. You can start small projects, help fund them and then expand.”

ACF Is The Money

Key to the Association’s ability to fund such initiatives is, of course, TIACA’s bi-annual Air Cargo Forum. The previous ACF was held in Paris in October last year and its follow-up will be hosted in Toronto in October 2018.
Scholte said ACF was an integral part of the organization’s value proposition as well as a key income-generator.
“TIACA is funded by its membership and, of course, by events, and the Air Cargo Forum is a big contributor and has to be successful in order for TIACA to remain economically viable.

Toronto ACF This October

“Things went well in Paris – it’s a good location, easily accessible.
Things are progressing well for Toronto also. The fact that it’s in Toronto doesn’t mean it’s a Canadian event, it’s a worldwide event. Global players meet global customers and global suppliers and so on. It’s of course challenging to bring it all together, and the cooperation that we have now with AFRAA (the African Airlines Association) and talks we are having with ALACAT (the Federación de Asociaciones Nacionales de Agentes de Carga y Operadores Logísticos Internacionales de América Latina y el Caraibe) in South America will help.

Forwarder Initiative

“We are trying to get more forwarders to the event and we’re doing everything to make it as attractive as possible for everybody. “There will be shippers there, there will be good content, excellent networking opportunities and we have to make it work.”
Air Cargo Forum is open to all. For more information please click here…
http://www.aircargoforum.org/

TIACA Into Tomorrow

Scholte said there was more scope for building the TIACA brand beyond its current strength in Europe and the US and, to a less extent Asia.
To this end, TIACA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with AFRAA in November, which will see the organizations work more closely on a range of issues affecting air freight.
“We are expanding globally by acting more regionally,” he said. “We are were trying to strengthen our ties regionally and what that means is that we will exchange information and help each other out with memberships etc.
“I believe in more closer cooperation with other organizations, especially in those parts of the world where TIACA is not as well known.
“The more we all work together the better the overall air cargo product will become,” Sebastian Scholte said.
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