Qantas Airways Ltd has set up a separate company to hold its freight assets and is in talks about acquisitions for the business, the carrier’s chief executive Geoff Dixon was quoted as saying according to a report in TheSydney Morning Herald.

“We have established a separate company already to hold these assets,” Dixon told the Merrill Lynch Australia Investment Conference in New York recently.

“There really are opportunities for us to do something different with this sort of (freight) business and I believe it can be successful as a stand-alone business. We would only do it if we thought it was benefi cial for shareholders … and before we do this, we will have to make a couple of acquisitions, and there’s some discussions going on about that at the moment,” he said.

Earlier, Qantas boosted its freight arm by taking full control of Singaporebased operator DPEX Worldwide. Mr Dixon said Qantas was still considering future ownership structures for the group’s so-called non-flying businesses, which include the freight, fl eet and frequent fl yer units.