Amsterdam Airport Schiphol’s total cargo volume for 2020 declined by 8% to 1.44 million tonnes compared to 2019. Last year freight volumes were shipped in three categories of flights; full freighters, which accounted for 61% of total volume, pax-cargo-only, which includes passenger flights with only freight on board at 10%, and passenger flights at 29%.
Inbound cargo volumes declined by 4.7% to 754,361 tonnes in 2020 compared to 2019, and outbound cargo volumes decreased by 11.7% to 687,161 tonnes during the same period. The three biggest destinations for cargo tonnage were Shanghai, China, Doha, Qatar, and Chicago, USA.
Supporting customers through COVID-19
“The 2020 figures are in line with our expectations given the challenging year we all had to face,” said Patricia Vitalis, incoming Director Airport Operations and Aviation Partnerships.
“I am proud of our cargo community and our team at Schiphol, who have worked hard to continue supporting our customers through the pandemic in a constantly changing business landscape and for providing new routes for new cargo airlines to transport essential PPE consignments.
“The cargo community at Schiphol has focused on collaboration to find solutions including the launch of Vaccines Gateway Netherlands, which is a task force of more than 60 companies providing the swift, secure, and safe transportation of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“We will continue to work together to ensure that supply chains keep moving.”
Challenging times
Outbound traffic to the Asian region from Schiphol was down 8.21% to 238,889 tonnes in 2020 compared to 2019, and inbound declined 0.58% to 266,688 tonnes.
The outbound North American market fell 8.27% to 150,988 tonnes, while inbound was down 9.72% to 101,132 tonnes. Cargo inbound to Latin America declined 10.84% to 102,983 tonnes and outbound dropped 4.28% to 72,899 tonnes. European figures show outbound traffic fell 28.62% to 85,395 tonnes and inbound increased 0.01% to 106,487 tonnes.
The Middle East market inbound showed a positive story as inbound was up 8.51% to 101,014 tonnes, but outbound was down 9.28% to 96,321 tonnes. Outbound traffic to Africa was down 17.67% to 42,669 tonnes and inbound declined 21.00% to 76,057 tonnes. Flower imports from Africa showed a dip in the first half of the year, but stabilised later in the year.
2020 successes and new beginnings for 2021
Last year, we accelerated our Smart Cargo Mainport Program, ensuring faster handling of export cargo, resulting in all ground handlers at Schiphol being ready for digital and/or electronic pre-notification in January 2021.
We also joined the Circular Plastics Alliance as part of our commitment to ensuring the flowers moving through our airport are shipped sustainably. The Alliance has introduced standardized box sizes for flower consignments to reduce the product importers’ carbon footprint by 25%, whilst increasing their profitability by 25% at the same time.
This year will see the cargo team moving into a newly-established Aviation Business Development Division, putting all airline and cargo commercial and operational business in a single department and introducing new faces. Schiphol expects to share the new operational model with the Cargo Community once this is in place. This year will also see the continued modernization of airport cargo information platform Cargonaut’s Port Community System under the flag of Schiphol.
