A good year

Its current position is good, but it knows the market is hard, often unforgiving and not likely to ease for some time to come. Nor is letting good figures for its new just-opened destinations such as Fukuoka (above) and Guangzhou getting in the way of its realism. More striking still has been the other destination Finnair opened last month – Guangzhou – although the freight carried is very different. The seafood market hasn’t started yet nor has the pharma side, but inbound from the Southern Chinese business capital Finnair is doing “very good loads,” according to Tarvainen, of all kinds of industrial goods. Th is fits into a pattern of a very good year so far at least in terms of volumes moved in so strained a market revenues are the sort of issue that is getting glossed over in the hope of better days to come. “So far this year load wise the development has been very, very good” said Tarvainen. Last year Finnair moved 130,000 tonnes and this year has exceeded that, in the last two months there has been growth of 20 per cent year-on-year, something which also applies to RTK, he said. “That’s been pretty good…its excellent,” he added. “We have really focused on certain markets and focused on getting the loads in” he said of the overall approach.

A tough 2016/17

Where he is more forthcoming is on the immediate prospects for the sector and it is not optimistic either about this year and maybe the next as well. “This year globally will be disappointing for air cargo, no doubt about” Tarvainen said, adding he was “100 per cent sure”about that gloomy fact. Chief amongst his reasons is China. “The times of double digit growth are gone. We can see the difference,” he said with a hint of regret. Nor does he see an upswing there or seemingly elsewhere. “I don’t believe in any kind of miracle in big markets like China,” he said. Also to be factored in the Eurozone and its problems and indeed at the time of writing, Britain has only just voted to leave the European Union. The big issue though is capacity, or really overcapacity – a problem he, like so many others, feels isn’t going to end anytime soon.

“It would be naïve to think that 2017 will see capacity go away and that will give huge pressures to the market,” he said candidly. Longer term there is not much bounce either. Passenger demand is growing which means more and more capacity enters the market “every day.” Worsening this is the slump in oil prices. “No aircraft is in storage” he said adding cheap oil allows planes to keep flying. Longer term oil prices have another problem: Uncertainty. “No-one knows what is going to the happen with the oil price,” he added. Against that there is some qualified optimism. “We do see good signs in the Eurozone, for example consumer confidence is surprisingly high,” said Tarvainen who hopes it will impact the market positively.

Original Source: Payload Asia Magazine July 2016