AS fresh Indian mangoes begin rolling into the market, traditional fruit exporters and freight forwarders are staring at the risk of air freight capacity constraints - in an already unbalanced supply-demand environment - cutting into their shipment volume targets.
Indian-grown mangoes, locally touted as "the king of all fruits", generally draw high demand internationally, especially in the European markets, reports London's The Loadstar.
That capacity pain point was voiced by Mohnish Arora, GM of perishable cargo trade at Jet Freight Logistics (JFL), a Mumbai-based niche air freight company. JFL is in the final stages of launching an in-house airline to cement its lead in the market.
"I believe cargo capacity will remain under great pressure," Mr Arora said. "As the air bubble agreements, which had been in force, were removed last month, all P2C [passenger-to-cargo] flights have been reinstated as passenger flights."
According to Mr Arora, the fleet reconfigurations would effectively reduce the available air cargo capacity by about 50 per cent, despite the fact that some airlines had restored passenger flights to pre-Covid schedule levels.
Mr Arora notes that the majority of mango shipments JFL handles are shipped to the EU, UK, US and Middle East markets, largely using flight connections over London, Frankfurt, Milan and Paris.
"We are primed to handle approximately 500 tonnes of mango shipments a week this year," Mr Arora said.
According to him, as airline capacity continues to be tested, there is little reason to be hopeful that the coming weeks will yield any sort of respite from high freight rates for fruit shippers.
He also noted that several airlines that had reduced their workforce during the Covid disruption now have difficulty getting back to full capacity.
Further, added Mr Arora, the current geopolitical turmoil was only sending fuel prices northwards, thus pushing up carrier costs that would inevitably be passed on to cargo owners through fresh rate hikes or additional surcharges.
Fiscal 2021-22, Indian cargo volumes via "major ports" rose 7 per cent year on year to 719.38 million tonnes, according to provisional figures.
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