In his opening remarks at the opening the World Cargo Symposium (WCS), Brendan Sullivan, Global Head of Cargo at IATA, laid out the challenges the industry faces – as reflected in the event’s theme of ‘sustainable growth’ and the focus areas of digitalisation, sustainability, and safety and security.

For digitalisation, the big issue could be boiled down to one element: visibility of shipment data across the entire supply chain. For the industry to grow, shipment data needs to be broken out of the silos and systems of individual stakeholders, enabling greater shared visibility for all users along the shipment journey. While all speakers agreed that this change was necessary, reluctance to confront it was identified as an inhibiting factor.

‘Constant change for anyone is never easy,’ Sullivan said. ‘But it is absolutely worth it when that change delivers 60 million tonnes of cargo [a year] which powers economies, improves people’s lives and genuinely makes our world a better place.’

Digitalisation is an opportunity to embrace

There also is a lot of to be gained, as Director Cargo Tom Owen outlined in his opening plenary panel session. ‘The opportunities of digitisation to improve the supply chain are really fundamental,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of value still to be unlocked, simply by raising the efficiencies of what we do as an industry.’

Cathay’s Head of Cargo Digital Ingrid Lee pointed out in her various presentations that the basis for change is already in place. ‘Our air-cargo industry is highly interdependent – we are highly connected,’ she said. ‘In order to achieve the full potential of digital transformation, we all need to collaborate. Ecosystem connectivity building is going to be one of the key focuses for Cathay Cargo.’

IATA’s ONE Record data protocol was top of the agenda throughout the digitisation stream at WCS. This ‘single version of the truth’ that all parties can link into their systems will be implemented from 2026, but there is still much to be done.

Lee cited three innovative ONE Record use cases at Cathay Cargo. In a world first, the airline and forwarder Sinotrans were the first to use ONE Record to share data. The second case was a project with Hong Kong International Airport and its HKIA Cargo Data Platform, which shared information between Cathay Cargo and the customs authority to speed up clearance procedures. There has also been a live integration between Cathay Cargo and ground handling agents Worldwide Flight Services and Swissport, leveraging Cathay Cargo’s cargo management system solution vendor CHAMP.

These successes were based on learning from best practice – and taking the plunge. ‘Transformation is about change management,’ said Lee. ‘For any change to happen in business, including digital transformations, we need to be bold to take calculated risks.’

Speaking at another panel event, Simon Ng, Chief Executive of Global Logistics System (HK) Co. Ltd (GLS), which is Cathay Cargo’s development partner, said that the timeline to transformation need not be intimidating. He noted that the 2026 ONE Record deadline for implementation is having a galvanising effect. ‘It took almost 13 years for the airline industry to move from paper tickets to e-tickets,’ he said. ‘With the standardised framework that ONE Record offers, the process, data model and spirit of collaboration and determination, the digitalisation for Cargo shouldn’t take that long.’

Both Cathay Cargo and GLS were recognised at WCS for their digitalisation leadership, as founding signatories of IATA’s Air Cargo Digitalization Leadership Charter, which is another spur to develop a more collegiate approach.

‘Digitalisation is imperative,’ said IATA’s Sullivan at the presentation. ‘It requires alignment to ensure a unified and effective approach.’

Are you ready for the e-commerce tsunami?

Nowhere is this truer than with e-commerce, the topic for the final morning plenary session at WCS. It was very well attended given that it followed the previous evening’s gala dinner, reflecting e-commerce’s potential value and the extra demands it places on the industry in terms of consumer-led expectations of package-level track and trace. But as things stand, when carriers accept general cargo or mail shipments with e-commerce packages in them, they will not know the shipment contains e-commerce.

Yet e-commerce’s remarkable growth seems set to continue, so this level of visibility needs to change. Andre Majeres, Head of eCommerce and Cargo Operations at IATA, set the scene, outlining that the market grew by 30 per cent in 2023, and shows no sign of abating. ‘Forecasts always underestimate the growth and 80 per cent of all e-commerce currently goes by air – are you ready for the tsunami to come?’ he asked the room.

While Majeres highlighted a hybrid approach for air carriers pitched between post offices and integrators/express carriers as a big opportunity, there are also challenges for air cargo. These are again linked to visibility, from end-users to e-tailers to airlines. As Thomas Yu, Senior Director Global Hub Operations of Cainiao Network pointed out, ‘each package is a consumer’. He lamented that while airlines know everything about passengers, they know next to nothing about e-commerce parcels passing through their hands – and by 2027 there will be 256 billion of those a year.

Cathay Cargo’s Head of Cargo Global Operations Fanny Chan highlighted that data-sharing with partners through ONE Record offered one solution, but then raised another point: the challenge with e-commerce in relation to dangerous goods.

If packages contain items such as perfumes or goods powered by lithium-ion batteries and these are not properly declared, there are implications for safety – and costs to implement screening to detect them. Carriers are responsible for the declaration, so Chan highlighted Cathay Cargo’s Cargo Agent Operation Programme, and stricter penalties for undeclared and misdeclared dangerous goods, as changing the psychology around declarations.

‘The ultimate aim is to get the whole supply chain to collaborate to manage risk together,’ she said. ‘Visibility is the first step, but the safety mindset is also crucial for all stakeholders, and also during any implementation.’

The opportunity is there: the next step is working together to seize it.