Monthly Emirates Sky Cargo e-Freight tops one million kilos

Emirates Sky Cargo’s total shipments of e-freight – paperless cargo consignments – reached the one million kilos a month milestone, the carrier said last week. It also passed the 16-million kilo mark in total e-freight shipments.

The carrier, an enthusiastic advocate of the IATA initiative and the world’s leading carrier of e-freight, achieved this landmark in just 19 months and is now seeing around 12 per cent of shipments from compliant airports being sent in this way.

E-freight aims to take the paper documentation out of air cargo and to replace it with the exchange of electronic data and messages. A single shipment can involve up to 30 paper documents, and e-freight currently replaces 20 of these with electronic messages.

Before the advent of e-freight, the air cargo industry used the equivalent of 39 Boeing 747 freighters full of paper documents.

The carrier said that were it not for various Customs authorities still requiring a physical document, all of Emirates Sky Cargo’s transactions could be paperless thanks to its fully integrated air cargo management solution Sky Chain.

Key e-freight stations for Emirates Sky Cargo include Singapore, Zaragoza, Mauritius, London Heathrow, Hong Kong, Sydney, New York (JFK), Munich and the carrier’s hub Dubai. Emirates Malta is working towards introducing e-freight in Malta by 2011.

The carrier estimates that more than 50 of its airports will be handling e-freight by the end of this year.

Emirates Sky Cargo is represented in Malta by Cassar and Cooper Ltd, which has moved to the departures lounge at Malta International Airport. Emirates Airline operates a daily schedule from Malta to Dubai via Larnaca.