São Paulo – This Tuesday (10th) in São Paulo, Emirates SkyCargo, the cargo division of the Dubai-based airline, announced that it transported a record-breaking 25,000 tonnes in its Southern American operations in 2011. The company flies to three different destinations in Brazil and to Buenos Aires, in Argentina. The airline aims to increase the volume in coming years and make the Viracopos airport, located in Campinas, in the interior of the state of São Paulo, into its “mini-hub” in the region.
The senior vice president for cargo at Emirates SkyCargo, Ram Menen, told ANBA that Brazil has proved to be a destination “opportunities” for the company. He is in São Paulo to attend logistics fair Intermodal.
“Our freighters are making three trips a week to Brazil. We also begun flying to Rio, so the overall statistics for Brazil will grow,” said Menen. “We started operating here in 2006. Since then, air trade between Brazil and the United Arab Emirates has grown by 371%,” he said.
Viracopos is Emirates Sky Cargo’s main cargo platform in South America. After taking off from Campinas, the aircraft makes stops in Dakar, Senegal, and in Frankfurt, Germany. The company also uses the Emirates Airline passenger jets, which fly the São Paulo–Dubai and Buenos Aires–Rio de Janeiro–Dubai routes on a daily basis. The freighter transport capacity is 103 tonnes. The passenger aircraft carry roughly 20 tonnes in their luggage compartments.
Menen claims that the company’s target is to carry more cargo in 2012 than it did in 2011, but he does not disclose the growth rate expected for this year, because the segment depends on trade between Brazil and the Arab countries, which is on the rise.
According to the company’s cargo manager for South America, Dener Souza, the goal right now is to have Viracopos become a “mini-hub.” Out of the 25,000 tonnes carried in 2011, 4,000 were shipped from São Paulo. The remainder was shipped from Viracopos.
“We want Viracopos to be a ‘mini-hub.’ We can work with Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, a few South American countries. We can ship their products to other countries. We can grow in this way,” said Souza. He estimates that out of the total shipped by the company last year, 90% originated from Brazil and the remainder, from Argentina and Chile.
Menen stated that the company’s strategy is to grow in Brazil via the destinations it already operates in. He said Viracopos should be the shipping point for products made in other regions of Brazil to be sent to the Arab world, Africa and Europe.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
