Cargo’s recent revival already has one company, CHEP Aerospace solutions, looking forward to a bumper year. “We’re also building upon the momentum of our recent contract wins and long-term track records with our customers and look forward to a year with record growth,” Ludwig H. Bertsch, president, CHEP Aerospace Solutions told Payload Asia.

This is going to be dizzying as the company is already growing year-onyear and has achieved revenue growth with a 41 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2010, Bertsch added. He did not mention a specific revenue amount (shame) but reported parent company Brambles Limited’s sales revenue was US$5.4 billion in FY14.

It is the relationship with Brambles that is one of CHEP’s distinguishing factors according to Bertsch. It gives the ULD and galley cart services manager to airlines around the world “our neutrality our neutrality as CHEP is not owned by an airline but by an asset management company with global footprint, expertise and financial strength,” he said.

The pooling advantage

The other two distinguishing factors are its use of pooling which makes the world’s largest ULD fleet available to CHEP’s 80 customers and operating the world’s largest ULD and galley cart repair network. This includes 29 stations owned and managed by CHEP so that customers don’t have to ship damaged ULDs back to their hub.

The customers using these services include some of the airline industry’s great and good with a sizable number coming from Asia. Among them are Air Canada, AirAsia X, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Hawaiian Airlines, Jetstar Japan, KLM, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines and United Airlines, said Bertsch.

There is a specific business reason for this. ULD management is not core to an airline’s operation but is important as airlines need the right ULD type in the right place at the right time, and airworthy. CHEP does all this but not in a one-size-fits-all way.

Prior to presenting its proposal CHEP has several meetings with the prospect airlines so it can identify and analyse their pain points this leads to a customised solution although not always so.

“Most of our customers have opted for joining our pool which is branded with our CHEP label and R7 IATA code, and a few, for example Cathay Pacific, have chosen the outsourcing option via a co-branded dedicated container fleet and a pooling system for cargo pallet requirements. Cathay’s decision to select dedicated containers was driven by the fact that Cathay had already started to transition their baggage containers to 58kg lightweight, which we will now expedite and complete within the first year of contract. We are flexible and are able to work out a proposal which provides the most benefits for our customers,” said Bertsch.

Within this there is a lot of attention being paid to detail in a ‘good housekeeping’ way. It proves Bertsch’s point that an outsourced company adds value by focusing on specific, sometimes highly specific, parts of the flight leaving the airline free to focus on its core ops.

Forward looking

There are two forward-looking ways it shows this. One is a new service, that is proving to be very attractive, according to Bertsch: Strap management. “We have developed a system that addresses loss of visibility and the resulting overconsumption problem,” he said.

A second is the very basis of the business, ULDs. As CHEP buys ULDs for its customers, both for replacement and growth, and has to plan ahead. “We expect high demand for lightweight containers in line with our customers’ sustainability targets and for heavyduty pallets to meet the cargo peaks,” said Bertsch.

That said the advantage CHEP brings is the pooling, especially for freighter customers who often need ULD at remote locations like five minutes ago, meaning the company has to pull out all stops to meet the request.

“Thanks to our scale and the pooling concept we can count on the cooperation of the partner airlines who are able to help with the positioning of the ULDs within our global network,” said Bertsch. It also does a good line in one-off unusual requests. “One we were and still are very proud of being able to fulfil is supplying customised containers to the Swiss-based Formula 1 team, Sauber.

These containers have been modified to enable safe transportation of the vehicle and spares such as wheels,” Berstch added.