HAE GROUP: INTERNATIONAL AIR CARGO CAN STILL BE FUN!

Richard Thackeray, chief operating officer for East Midlands airport-based HAE Group, is in harness as the airfreight industry in Europe is seeing the backwash from Brexit, seven years after the vote to leave.

A provider of services to the air cargo industry for over 25 years, HAE Group has seen some significant shifts in undertaking activity with the remaining 27 countries of the European Union.

“In the GSA section in our solutions business, it has meant that our compliance and carrier services have been in increased demand. The value-added services we offer include customs clearance, advising and issuing documentation. There is however less business transhipping the UK from the EU,” he notes.

“A level of complexity has been added relative to customs and compliance, however, conversely many customers to long haul destinations now seek direct services rather than trucking to an EU Hub.”

Thackeray considers that operations to and from Europe are one of HAE Group’s strongest markets as it offers services on one of Europe’s largest overnight air networks. It has always been a key market for HAE in terms of GSA activity and also in its solutions business. This is expected to grow.

General confidence

Thackeray points out that capacity in the market has increased and seems to be back up to 2019 levels. There is less intra EU trucking to and from the UK following increased customs complexities. The summer schedules of many carriers have grown as well in 2023, so capacity is certainly there, whether demand will match the capacity with many economies struggling to grow is still to be seen.

HAE partners and sub contracts to its sub-agents on the EU mainland and it has its own operations in the UK and Ireland. While the GSA business is UK and Irish focused, the group has long-term airline partners and a large customer base.

Thackeray says: “We have just rebranded our Solutions activity as Groupair in Europe. We have a large trade lane to and from Southern Africa for exports and imports to and from Europe so this is where we see our immediate growth out of the key gateways in Germany and the Netherlands. We have also commenced wholesale activity to and from Hong Kong and China.

“We were lucky not to be affected by the ‘Great Resignation’. However, everyone is feeling the pinch relative to the cost of living increases. Our technology and offshoring ability mean that we will always sell in country but have a unique ability to offshore some of the workflow elements of our business.

“Not many of our teams have changed careers – international air cargo can still be fun!”

He says that HAE Group has advanced plans for the Benelux region and Germany. While, in general, European air cargo operations have felt impact from the continuing Ukraine military adventure, HAE Group has also not escaped impact from events.

He says: “Yes, there has been an impact operationally and commercially.Most cargo has now found alternative routings. However, sea/air ex-Asia that we handle in the Middle East has been in low demand.”

Elsewhere in Europe, “Q1 ended strongly and we hope this can continue through the year and we expect demand to and from Asia and Europe to pick up in the second half of the year. We think with our GSA+ services we can mitigate the economic impact of reducing yields and growing capacities, as we like to think we give our customers more options and we work hard with our airline partners to be the service of choice.

“We have learnt to embrace change and analysed every link in our workflow from origin customer to destination handover. Our teams have embraced hybrid working and we have invested heavily in digitising as many components of our business as we can.

“This has freed up our teams to stay close to our customers and airline partners to help navigate the changes presented to the entire supply chain … more to come we are sure!” concludes Thackeray.