The message from TIACA Chairman Michael Steen read: “…in 2012, we have the added bonus of being co-located at the Georgia World Congress Center with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). I would urge you to take in this event while in Atlanta to meet some of the 3,000 shippers and forwarders that will be participating.”
     Two freight trains on parallel tracks pass in the night…
     There wasn’t much crossover between the attendees at these two events; as a matter of fact, FlyingTypers heard more than a few TIACA exhibitors wondering where their prospective customers were. Mostly, the forwarders had been missed.
     FlyingTypers planned to attend the CSCMP “mega-session”—Preparing for 2025: Mega Trends that Will Affect Your Supply Chain—which sounded interesting. It turned out that the TIACA registration didn’t grant access to CSCMP session, only to the exhibition, but yours truly sneaked in anyway, and was very glad about it—it was the best panel in Atlanta that week. So much for co-location and synergies (maybe sharing costs was all that it really meant).
     While the TIACA exhibition hall crowd had thinned out significantly by Wednesday afternoon, the CSCMP session was absolutely packed, every seat filled and throngs of people standing around the meeting room in anticipation of what the future might bring. This high-powered panel was moderated by Kevin O’Marah, senior research fellow, Stanford Business School’s global supply chain forum, Frank Jones, VP Technology and Manufacturing group, GM Customer Fulfillment Planning and Logistics, Intel Corp.; John Lund, senior VP Disney Parks Supply Chain Management; and Beth Ford, executive VP, chief supply chain and operations officer, Land O’Lakes.
     Each panelist gave an overview relevant to the business their companies are in, but the questions from the audience brought the discussion to the potential engine of the future, with perhaps some surprising projections—such as Africa being the candidate for the fastest rate of growth expected. The questions around how China will evolve were harder to predict, given that the working conditions there may be unsustainable in the long term and could lead to turmoil. A stark contrast was also the increase in the affordability of robotics with the other, dark side of the coin being a jobless recovery. While the developed countries strive to use more technology to enable (and control?) workers, China needs to employ more and more people.
     One issue that would have elicited much interest from the aviation community was Beth Ford’s presentation of facts related to the limited amount of arable land on the globe (at only 12 percent) with water demand projected to outstrip supply by 40 percent by 2050 and the need to produce more food with fewer resources and less environmental impact. As a comparison, a U.S. farmer in 1930 fed 10 people; by 2010, one farmer feeds 155. In that context, and based on trends in how the world feeds itself, the thought is that biofuels are not a viable alternative because population growth will inject reality, and food production is the clear imperative and higher priority.
     Frank Jones said that Intel was heavily reliant on air transport in their global supply chain because of timeliness and speed factors. He foresaw technical evolution to take the shape of more intelligent networks able to interact with each other, be more flexible, dynamic, and complex, including transportation networks.
      In response to our questions Frank said that there was active dialogue with the forwarders and primarily express carriers and less so with combination carriers and all-cargo airlines. The trend mentioned by the speakers, such as greater interaction between the digital and physical products side, may give carriers serving the supply chains some insight into future requirements. It was a forgone conclusion that nobody has a good forecast anymore because of current volatility, yet close dialogue among all stakeholders would benefit all the participants to a greater degree than was presently the case.
      Despite more emphasis on getting closer to the shippers, it seems the business model that has been in place for decades would now really need to be shaken up as prerequisites to success. The transportation industry is consumed with compliance, security, e-freight and fuel price issues, which remain important, but little is heard about revolutionizing how shippers, forwarders, and airlines interact to realize new ways to do business and adapt to changing expectations.
     The supply chain will continue to require transportation, of that there was little doubt, and looking back does offer some perspective, with a business cycle having come to an end around 1999—where were Apple, Google, and China then?
Ted Braun

     Talk about the best and the brightest . . . Florence Lee shines after her appointment as MNX Regional Director Sales & Customer Service for Asia Pacific this past summer, indicating equality is coming to Asia’s logistics and transport industry.
      Lee was recruited by MNX from DHL, where she was Asia Pacific customer manager for the life sciences, engineering, and manufacturing sectors. With ten years experience in the supply chain industry, she is now charged with expanding the expedited logistics service provider’s sales and customer service infrastructure across the region. What’s more, she has stepped up and met the challenge.
      “In the past, most of the businesses conducted in Asia by MNX were in support of our multinational customer base from Europe and the Americas,” she said.
      “Today, we’re seeing many of these multinationals basing their regional HQ or even their global HQs in Asia. And we’re seeing many ‘home-grown’ Asian companies expanding domestically, throughout intra-Asia, and globally, which represents new market opportunities for MNX.
      “MNX is well-positioned to leverage the expertise it has developed in aviation, life sciences, and entertainment logistics in the United States to become a provider of choice in Asia,” she said.
      “My personal goals are to leverage my experience to help MNX build its brand recognition in the region.”
      MNX has been recording double-digit growth rates in Asia in recent years, but the region still only contributes five percent of annual revenue. The company is now expanding its footprint by quadrupling its investments in the next 3-5 years and the appointment of key executives such as Lee is viewed as critical in that process.
      “The perception within Asia right now is that MNX is primarily a specialist courier who only offers Next-Flight-Out and Hand-carry services,” she said. “However, MNX offers much more than that. MNX has the ability to meet any customer’s logistics needs: customizing services to satisfy required transit times, budget, terms-of-trade, inventory management and distribution, and fulfillment.”
      “In three to five years, I expect Asia Pacific to contribute over 30 percent of the global MNX group revenues.”
      In addition to Singapore, MNX has plans to rapidly expand operations across the region as it moves to become a wholly owned operating structure. The company currently has operations in Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, and Vietnam, and offices in Japan and India are due to open by the end of 2012.
      Lee admits that after university graduation, she had no desire to pursue a career in the logistics field.    

     After several stints in various sales positions, she was looking to move into a role that offered more challenging opportunities with a global reach. The process started with IBM 15 years ago when she was tasked with designing a workflow process to manage the timely distribution of new product samples in Asia Pacific.
      “This opened me up to a world of supply chain management and distribution, from manufacturing to final delivery,” she said.
      She then became well established as an executive of authority in the life sciences field. The position with MNX, she says, will enable further career growth.
      “From a professional standpoint, all of my previous positions have been very focused on developing a global logistics network for a single industry sector (Life Sciences). This opportunity with MNX will allow me to further develop professionally and broaden my expertise into new market segments like aviation, entertainment, and media.”
      She admits the operations business of the logistics industry is still largely male dominated, but she believes at its most basic level as a service industry it offers a good career for women.
      “I don’t think that it is any more difficult for women to succeed in the front-end sales and business development part of the business,” she said. “What we are selling is confidence and trust, an enabler for businesses to succeed and be more productive.
      “I think that if you look at the business in this frame, then neither gender has a true advantage, and women may even have a slight edge.
      “When I have customer meetings, I notice that there are more women decision makers out there.”
      We wonder if Florence would recommend the sector to women in her own family; she says each individual should pursue their own passion.
      “If that passion is in services, in particular services tailored to helping businesses excel at what they do best, then yes.
      “Cartons/boxes, containers, trucks, ships, and planes are generally found in a boy’s toy box, but these are also usually associated with logistics. However, to me, these are tools in the logistics business to help others get their stuff from one point to another in the desired time and condition.
      “The real engine behind the movement of goods/stuff from one point to another is a whole lot of people who have an eye for detail, a keen sense of observation, and an adaptive attitude.
      “If a woman has what it takes, why not?”
SkyKing

     It is not only the big dads of the cargo airline industry that are keen about India in this slow market; there are others as well.
     Over the last few months, Sri Lankan has expressed it is keen to start flights from the port city of Vishakapatnam on the east coast of India to Colombo.
     Latest reports indicate that Sri Lankan would be starting flights with small aircraft that have a capacity of 120 seats.
    

Rishiconda Beach at Vishakapatnam is not just for business—it’s a popular destination for travellers of all stripes. Now Sri Lankan Airlines is ramping up services to build trade and take advantage of the large influx of Sri Lankans working and living in Vizag. 

     Incidentally, the coastal city has air connections to Dubai, and by the end of this month will be linked to Singapore thrice weekly by SilkAir.
     One of the major reasons for the interest is that Vishakapatnam, or Vizag as it is well known, has a large number of Lankans—most work with Brandix India, a part of one of the biggest international garment manufacturers, Brandix, based in Sri Lanka.
     The company is Sri Lanka's single largest apparel exporter with an annual turnover of over US $500 million and more than 34 manufacturing facilities.
     The Brandix India Apparel City (BIAC) in Vizag spans across 1,000 acres and in the course of the next few years will boast 20-odd garment factories.
     Along with the Sri Lankan employees, Sri Lankan wants to tap into the huge volume of apparels sent out from BIAC on special cargo flights.
     In addition to garments, Vizag has pharma, food processing units, and a diamond-cutting unit that need international air connectivity to fly out their shipments abroad.
     Vizag is gearing up to handle international air cargo traffic and a new cargo terminal will be ready for operations sometime in the second quarter of 2013.
     Presently, the city handles only 2,500 tons of cargo, although it has enough potential to be on par with Chennai international airport, which handled 370,255 tons (both domestic and international cargo) in 2011.
     The cargo that is sent out from Vizag today basically comprises perishable items like pharma products and fish.
     Once the cargo terminal is completed, other items from nearby areas would be able to take advantage of air connectivity.
     According to the Federation of Indian Fisheries Industry, the new cargo center at the airport would be able to do build business with exports reaching more than 2,500 tons.
     There is a huge market for Lion Tuna in South East Asia and Japan as well as Europe.
     One of the other reasons for Sri Lankan’s interest in Vizag stems from the fact that the carrier wants to position Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) as a regional hub for air freight.
     Recent news reports indicate that BIA is on course to creating a record in the tonnage of cargo handled and Sri Lankan is helping it achieve that goal.
     Further south, at Tiruchirappalli or Tiruchi, for example, Sri Lankan operates 14 flights a week to Colombo. In fact, the international airport at Tiruchi has over the last few months seen cargo uplift going up substantially.
     In addition to Sri Lankan, the other carriers lifting cargo are Tiger Airways, Air Asia, and Mihin Lanka.
     India’s exports remain a key attraction for most airlines and Sri Lankan has tapped into the market while capitalizing on the geographical location of its hub at Colombo.
     India continues to be Sri Lanka’s largest export destination—hence the airline’s 87 flights a week that connect Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Kochi, Trivandrum, Mumbai, and Trichy.
Tirthankar Ghosh

Larry Coyne
Chief Executive Officer
Coyne Airways

Nancy Childers
Starlight Airlines

   An Antonov AN 225, the world's largest air freighter, lands at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Leipzig with the city skyline as backdrop.
   Now Exxon/Mobil is preparing a mountaintop roost for Antonovs in Papua, New Guinea.

     It’s the curious tale of an energy giant that went up a mountain and built an Antonov airfield, as civil construction works for one of the world’s most ambitious air cargo projects. The feat could now be completed next year, but the start date for operations remains a mystery as the project continues to suffer delays.
     Komo LNG International Airport is being built at the top of a high altitude mountain range in the remote Highlands region of the Asia Pacific state of Papua New Guinea. Once it is completed it will be able to receive some of the largest cargo aircraft currently in service.
     The new airport will be the definition of purpose-built, and that purpose is extracting PNG’s natural resources.
     It is designed with the sole aim of aiding the construction, maintenance, and supply of the massive Exxon Mobil-led $15.7bn PNG LNG project, which is due to start exporting in 2014 and is forecast to supply some 6.6 million tonnes per annum starting in 2015.
     Neil Ashdown, IHS Asia Pacific analyst, said construction work on the airport and associated infrastructure was ongoing but had been delayed by “a combination of natural hazards, logistical challenges, and landowner issues.”
     An Exxon Mobil spokesperson was unable to comment on when exactly the airport would open and the scope of the delay.
     “More than 60 percent of earthworks have been completed, pavement trials are underway, and the asphalt plant has been commissioned,” said Peter Graham, Project Managing Director at Exxon Mobil, earlier this year.
     PNG is located some 450 kilometers north of Cairns in Australia. Such is the country’s mineral and energy wealth that it is sometimes referred to as a mountain of gold floating on a sea of oil.
     The PNG LNG project is massive, taking in hundreds of kilometers of piping, the construction of a huge LNG plant, a new port and a gas conditioning plant in the Hides area of the remote Highlands region.      Equipment is being shipped and trucked in from all over the world and 17,600 people are currently employed in the construction phase.
     At present construction materials and supplies being moved to the PNG LNG site must be unloaded at the port of Lae and trucked hundreds of kilometers along the Highlands Highway, which despite its grand title is a tortuous route prone to weather-induced landslides, bridge collapses, banditry, and disputes with local landowners that frequently turn violent. One analyst claims that the cost of moving a single container from Lae to the high altitude Highlands regions is more than $16 per kilometer.
     This is where the airport comes in. Komo airfield is located 10 kilometers south east of the Hides gas conditioning plant and, with a runway 3.2 kilometers in length, will be able to handle some of the largest cargo planes currently in operation. McConnell Dowell and Consolidated Contractor Group Offshore Joint Venture are building it under a contract that also includes upgrading roads between the airport and the gas reconditioning plant to heavy-load standard, plus the construction of two new bridges also suitable for heavy loads.
     “The airfield is being built to accommodate Antonov airplanes,” a spokesperson for Exxon Mobil told FlyingTypers.
     “We will use it to bring in the large pieces of equipment for the Hides Gas Conditioning Plant.
     “Some of the pieces of equipment are too large to be trucked up the Highlands Highway from Lae, which is why the airfield is required.”
Sky King

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