Powered by LeanSquare and Liege Airport, the WeCargo event, supported from the very outset by Alibaba Cloud, Qatar Airways and Orange, will bring together start-ups, air cargo industrialists and investors from November 7 to 14, 2019 for a week devoted to imagining the future of air freight. The world of air transport is obviously part and parcel of the digital revolution. Whether it is digitalisation of information systems, flow management thanks to big data analysis, drones and autonomous vehicles, connected objects etc., new technologies are moving faster than an aircraft!
The partnership between Liege Airport and LeanSquare to create an innovation laboratory (www.wecargo.be) will bring aviation logistics leaders, innovators and investment funds together at the airport to take stock of business needs and work on solutions.
Luc Partoune, CEO of Liege Airport, explains the reasons for this event devoted to innovation:
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The arrival of the e-commerce giant Alibaba with its first European air hub in Liege is an opportunity to capitalise on the know-how of the airport. If we want to stay at the forefront and continue to grow as an airport entirely dedicated to cargo, we must stimulate our ecosystem. This is the main goal of WeCargo: to stimulate and inspire the international cargo community. Secondly, start-ups will have the opportunity to move to Liege because they will benefit from a complete, dynamic environment at the heart of the action.
Luc Partoune adds:
The presence of Alibaba, Qatar Airways and Orange at our side will enable us to get directly to the core of the profession and give WeCargo an international dimension from the very outset. It’s also a great opportunity for start-ups to be in touch with industry majors in the sector.
INNOVATIVE, QUALITY PROJECTS
For Gaëtan Servais, CEO of Noshaq, the involvement of LeanSquare is part of an international approach to attract start-ups and investors:
Cargo e-logistics is one of the specialities of our LeanSquare investment fund dedicated to start-ups in the new economy. Just as we have done by developing Wallifornia (specialised in the MediaTech sector) over the last three years, organising this programme will allow us to develop, in partnership with Liege Airport, an international network of players in the Air Cargo industry (professionals, investment funds and start-ups). The aim is to ensure for LeanSquare and the airport a dealflow of quality innovative and disruptive projects that will place Liege even more firmly on the international map of cargo and airfreight. Finally, this programme is a sort of accelerator of contacts for start-ups in our portfolio.
Whether it be to draw inspiration from the success story of Liege Airport, to listen to quality international speakers, to meet the start-ups in the airline sector or to get in touch with Alibaba, Qatar, Montea etc., WeCargo is the event you must not miss!
WECARGO – THE PROGRAMME
ACCELERATION PROGRAMME – from November 7 to November 14, 2019
A dozen Belgian and international start-ups in the sector looking for funding will be supported for 1 week with 3 main objectives:
* to help them better understand how an investment fund works;
* to give them the opportunity to meet the “crème de la crème” of the global AirCargo industry;
* to let them pitch their projects to a panel of investors in the sector.
* One of the prizes is an invitation to go and present their project to the Alibaba teams in China.
HACKATHON – from November 13 to November 14, 2019
About 50 hackers (industry professionals, data analysts, engineers, startups) will work for 24 hours on challenges proposed by the industry (Nallian, Liege Airport etc.). The objective is to produce initial solutions that hopefully will become startups in the future. One of the prizes is an invitation to present their project to the Qatar Airways teams in Doha. We are organising this event in collaboration with Michel Duchateau (Convidencia), the Belgian hackathon specialist.
SUMMIT – November 14, 2019
About 300 industry professionals are set to attend, to find out about the future of the sector at this event.
Liege Airport, ranked the 7th cargo airport in Europe and the 1st in Belgium, is the only European airport to prioritise full cargo (#freightersfirst). It is specialised in express transport, e-commerce, pharmaceutical products and perishable goods as well as live animals. Liege Airport, and its brand Flexpress, is operational 24/7 without restrictions, offering flexible and rapid quality service, all at less than a day’s journey by truck to the heart of the Golden Triangle between Amsterdam, Paris and Frankfurt, reaching 400m consumers.
