Aircraft charter specialist Air Charter Service has announced plans to invest heavily in its On Board Courier (OBC) division worldwide.

Justin Lancaster, group commercial director at ACS, said: “We have been offering OBC solutions to forwarders and airlines for several years now, but we felt that it was an area where we could improve our service and so we now have invested in a dedicated operations office in Frankfurt. We have good relationships with more than 25,000 freight forwarders around the world, many of whom use us for time critical charters, so providing them with hand-carry options was the logical next step.

“We’ve hired several industry specialists and now have updated more than 35 visas for countries that we weren’t previously able to fly to at a moment’s notice. We’ve brought in Oliver Weigelt as the new Global Time Critical Manager to head up the operation. He brings with him over 10 years’ experience of freight forwarding and express couriering. Each ACS cargo specialist around the world has been specially trained in how best to help Oliver and his team with new enquiries. In March and April alone we averaged more than one booking a day, after only a ‘soft launch’ of the service to selected customers.

“We are planning on expanding this offering further over the next few years with offices on other continents in cargo hubs around the world to allow for the expected increase in demand. We aim to be the largest provider of OBC services to freight forwarders in the world.”

This investment comes on the back of Air Charter Service’s record year, in which the company announced a 14 per cent increase in revenue.