An Airport Cargo Community platform is an electronic platform that facilitates digital interactions between airport stakeholders viz. Importer / Exporters, Forwarders, Customs Brokers, Carriers, Customs, GHAs, Other Stakeholders at the airport.
     What followed was in fact the explanation of the interactions of the participants in a cargo community system: some take place at one to one level, some one to many and some many to many; interactions appear to take place and the level of reporting and interdependence of the body with a view to clarifying the reporting level of the various entities: evidently the stakeholders in the cargo sector of aviation are many, far too many for a simplistic approach. These include terminal operators, transporters, government agencies and Chambers of Commerce, cargo handlers, freight forwarders, airlines, shippers, consignees, banks, Customs, insurance companies, customs brokers and others.
      The next point that was made was concerning the Air Cargo Sector evolution; from a first generation cargo sector with simple IT instruments there was an evolution into a second generation with instruments such as EDI, tracking, online appointments and payments, etc.
     Nowadays we have what we call “next generation ACS”, where more sophisticated instruments are made available, such as advance filing, online vehicle tokens, etc.
      This appraisal nicely led the audience to hear about Kale’s ACS Pilot and its results. 389 trucks were handled with 1839 shipments for a total of 1.5 million pounds of cargo, with savings of $69,000 for driver labor, 1945 hours and in excess of nine million grams of CO2. Thus the results of the pilots were both interesting from the business point of view and the advancement of the environment point of view.
     Amar More continued explaining how to help the air cargo ecosystem with efficacy in the cargo business, on three levels: the first at the commercial level, helping airlines and stakeholders acquire profitability with concession models that would increase their ability to grow, focusing on service levels towards customers. The second level deals with the growth of business with marketing tools for attracting more cargo, as well as electronic retailing and commerce capabilities, by making airports attractive for shippers and airlines to become regional cargo gateways, with better understanding of the commodities and the customer requirements. In addition, a better understanding of the trade flows as well as partnering with other airports in developing digital corridors.
     The third level deals with sustainability and security with reduced carbon footprint, lower dwell times, whist helping the community operate in a safer manner in the pandemic times, as well as saving trees by promoting paperless trade.
     Helping the Air Cargo Ecosystem with Efficacy of Cargo Business was still the title of the slide provided as next point for the debate. This one was looking at the same issue also on three levels: the operational efficiency that can deliver effective warehouse planning and utilization of storage space and equipment, the instant and real time update of shipment status, and process automation addressing the issue of staff shortage. The second tier deals with cost reduction, which comes from data handling, by which costs are reduced, as well as information gathering costs like phone calls, emails and physical visits, which are avoided.
     In “Enhancing throughput of Airport Cargo Facilities” it was interesting to see the enhancement of the throughput of the air cargo facilities in Mumbai, where the small facility available moved around 1,500 trucks a day and the small warehouse processed close to 1,000,000 tonnes of air cargo per annum without any MHS.

     The remarkable chart above tells us the story of how it is possible to transform the airport cargo community system by making the industry safer, making us do more business with less, making the world more sustainable, making our airports less congested, by using the Kale modus operandi in a more transparent and connected manner.
     The key recommendations that our “man with a mission” Amar More delivered to the audience were to encourage the creation of air cargo community systems in all the airports in a country, then linking individual air cargo community systems at a national level to create national air cargo community systems (NACS), followed by the exhortation to link the individual ACS or NACS with those in other countries through digital trade corridors. The 4th recommendation was inevitably to link these systems with other modes of transport for a complete national digital logistics infrastructure.
     Amar More concluded his presentation with a bird’s eye view or all the achievements of his company, and with thanks and we are sure more than one of our readers want to thank Amar More for his Kale Logistics’ achievements, which contribute to their thriving business.
GDA