Virgin Atlantic Cargo has awarded a new three-year road feeder services contract to Jan de Rijk Logistics, extending its delivery network to over 50 airports across Europe. The new agreement enables the airline to offer an even wider choice of destinations to customers moving shipments on its flights into the UK from North America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
The majority of cargo arriving in London onboard Virgin Atlantic flights for onward connections in Europe is destined for the main airport hubs in Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris, which are served by next morning deliveries from the UK. Working with Jan de Rijk means the airline can also offer customers destinations across the continent and Scandinavia.
Jenny Holdaway, European service delivery manager at Virgin Atlantic Cargo said: “Jan de Rijk not only provide an extensive scheduled delivery network across Europe, they also understand our high customer service expectations and have consistently met our requirements. With their fleet also offering specialist vehicles for temperature-controlled cargoes, high value shipments and dangerous goods, it means we can give our customers the reach and services they require across Europe whether they need to move 10 tonnes to Amsterdam or 50 kilos to Prague.”
Jan de Rijk will be responsible for moving some 50 per cent of the airline’s cargo into Europe. Virgin Atlantic also partners with Cranleigh Freight Services on the major trucking routes linking London with Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris and recently extended its contract by a further three years.
Sebastiaan Scholte, chief executive of Jan de Rijk, said: “Our customer service and operations teams are very familiar with the Virgin Atlantic Cargo product and this contract extension reflects the trust the airline has in our extensive trucking network. In addition, being Good Distribution Practice (GDP) and now IATA CEIV Pharma Handling certified will help to support Virgin Atlantic’s value proposition to customers in the pharmaceutical industry and their logistics partners.”
