As fresh Indian mangoes are being brought into the market, Traditional fruit exporters and freight forwarders are facing the possibility of air freight capacity constraints – in an already uneven supply-demand scenario – eating into their shipment volume. Mangoes grown in India are in high demand worldwide, particularly in European markets. Mohnish Arora, GM of perishable cargo trade at Jet Freight Logistics (JFL), a Mumbai-based specialist air freight operator, addressed this capacity issue. JFL is nearing completion on the establishment of its own airline, which will help it maintain its market dominance.
“I believe cargo capacity will remain under great pressure, as all P2C [passenger-to-cargo] flights have been reinstated as passenger flights and the air bubble agreements, which had been in force were removed last month,” said Mohnish Arora.
According to Mr Arora, the fleet reconfigurations would effectively reduce the available air cargo capacity by about 50%, despite the fact that some airlines had restored passenger flights to pre-Covid schedule levels. 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.
