By John Oyuke
Emirates SkyCargo’s overall shipments of paperless cargo consignments, e-freight, have reached the one million kgs per month milestone, the company has said.
The company has also surpassed the 16 million kgs mark in total e-freight shipments this week.
The Dubai-based carrier achieved the landmark in 19 months, and is now seeing 12 per cent of shipments from compliant airports – such as Singapore, Zaragoza, Mauritius, London Heathrow, Munich, Dubai and New York (JFK).
Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President Cargo, Ram Menen, described e-freight as the future of the industry, and one the carrier is encouraging its forwarding partners to adopt.
"Its benefits are enormous, and we encourage our forwarding partners to adopt it," he said in a statement.
E-freight aims to remove paper documentation from air cargo and replace it with the exchange of electronic data and messages, with forwarders using the system enjoying a faster service, greater reliability and higher visibility with the option of tracking and tracing online.
Physical document
"Before the advent of e-freight, the air cargo industry used the equivalent of 39 Boeing 747 freighters full of paper documents. In fact, were it not for various Customs authorities still requiring a physical document, all of Emirates SkyCargo’s transactions could be paperless," said Menen. The International Air Transport Association estimates that the lower costs of e-freight are resulting in industry savings of up to $4.9 billion (about Sh390 billion) every year.
Earlier this year, Emirates SkyCargo launched an extensive marketing campaign to promote the benefits of e-freight throughout the industry.
The campaign, which comprised among others, online and print advertisements, direct mailers and a step-by-step instruction manual to e-freight, ran in more than 100 countries.
