News

Budapest Airport is expecting to handle over 100,000 tonnes of cargo in 2016 after breaking the 10,000 tonne a month mark for the first time in September.

Cargo volumes grew by 33 per cent in September helped by strong growth from Cargolux and Turkish Cargo, and Qatar Airways Cargo’s decision to operate a third weekly Airbus A330 Freighter from 7 October is expected to further increase cargo.

In addition, bellyhold cargo has grown with Emirates offering daily Boeing 777 services and new flights to Beijing with Air China and to Toronto with Air Canada Rouge.

Budapest Airport property director, René Droese says the strong growth means it is even more important that the dedicated air cargo base, Cargo City opens as planned in 2018.

“We are working hard on commencing the process of development of the Cargo City, negotiating with potential tenants who may start or continue their activities in a state-of-the-art air cargo facility within two years replacing the infrastructure currently used by them.”

Integrators have also been performing well, with the likes of DHL, UPS and FedEx flying from Budapest at night to major distribution hubs in Western Europe and returning at dawn with new cargo. DHL added a second daily aircraft in Budapest to cater for demand.

The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation, tasked with making the railway’s costliest freight corridor spanning nine states of the country, is confident that it will be able to tie up acquisition procedures for private land in the Navi Mumbai area by the end of monsoon this year. A few days ago, it issued notifications to acquire a chunk of private land totaling 10 hectares between Panvel and Uran under the Railways (Amendment) Act, 2008.

DFCC requires around 32 hectares of land to build the portion of the freight corridor between JNPT port and Panvel. The 10 hectares of land sought to be acquired is City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) land that has 3rd party interests (as in private entities using the land under various agreements with Cidco).

“The project needs to be completed by 2019. Acquiring land from private parties is tough as chances of litigation is high. However, we believe the compensation terms and conditions we are giving land owners under the Railways (Amendment) Act, 2008 is among the best in the country,” said a senior DFCC official.

A lot of work is going on at different stretches across nine states. The Cidco-DFCC land tussle was one of the biggest hurdles and one part of it is now solved. Now, the tricky part is of course acquiring the 10 hectares of land that has third party interests. That might take time but hopefully the state and the railway ministry will ensure the acquisition under the Railways (Amendment) Act, 2008 is done quickly,” said an official.

As reported by dna earlier, the DFCC has already paid Rs608 crore to Cidco for 14.4 hectares of vacant land owned by the latter at a price of about Rs42 crore per hectare.

Another seven hectares of land belonging to the revenue department of the state government will be acquired from the state directly by DFCC under rates set down by the collector. Officials told dna that the deal is in advanced stages and ready reckoner rates are being calculated to reach a price per hectare.

The freight corridor’s JNPT-Vadodara stretch passes through 269 villages of which 136 are in Maharashtra. The toughest part of the land acquisition process, DFCC officials agreed, was the scores of non-title holders (railway lingo for encroachers and squatters) in the Palghar to Dahanu belt. While these people are eligible for compensation, fixing a rate tends to become problematic and sometimes fraught with litigation, said officials.

Since October 2012 Stena Line and the leading European Intermodal Operator, Kombiverkehr Frankfurt and their partner Cemat Italy have been running a direct train connection between Kiel( Schwedenkai) and Verona(Quadrante Europa). On 21 April this year we celebrated a jubilee – the 1,000th trip of the Kiel-Verona shuttle train.

The fast train needs 24 hours only to run between both hubs. The length of the train is currently 540m for a maximum weight of 1,420 tons cargo, up to 25 trailers and or containers can be transported on each train combination.

From November 2012 until now more than 1.7 million of CO2 were saved for the units transported during this time compared to long-distance road haulage.

The train schedule is linked to the timetable on the route Gothenburg-Kiel. Customers are able to book for the entire journey combination from Gothenburg to Verona with just a single booking.

In Kiel the rail hub at Schwedenkai is located very close to our berth – 300 meters from the ferry. That guarantees a very efficient and secured handling in the port. The volume development during 2015 was very positive showing the increased demand for this connection.

For the time being Stena Line and Kombiverkehr/Cemat are preparing an analysis to increase from two to four departures per week and direction.

Stena Line is looking forward to establish more “Hinterland Solutions” for the freight market.

A “slight recovery” of the global economy saw September total cargo throughput at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport (FRA) rise by 5.9% to 180,252 tonnes.

Europe’s largest cargo hub saw volumes (airfreight + airmail) for the first nine months of 2016 increase marginally by 1.3% to just under 1.6m tonnes.

Earlier this week, London Heathrow saw cargo volumes also rise 5.9% in September to 126,109 tonnes on the back of growth to East Asia and Latin America, while year to date airfreight at the UK’s number one air cargo hub grew by 2.1% to just over 1.1m tonnes versus 2015’s like period.

Also in the UK, London Stansted’s September cargo volumes continued on an upward trajectory, with over 21,500 tonnes passing through the airport, a rise of 5.4% over the same month in 2015.

Stansted’s sister UK airports, owned by the MAG group, saw a September rise of 11.7% at Manchester to 9,970 tonnes, while East Midlands recorded a 3.9% increase to 29,500 tonnes.