China Southern Airlines Cargo, Air France KLM Martinair Cargo strengthen strategic ties

October 13, 2017: China Southern Airlines Cargo (CZ Cargo) and Air France KLM Martinair Cargo (AFKLMP Cargo) have signed a deal to further strengthen and shape its strategic cargo cooperation.

Marcel de Nooijer, EVP, Air France KLM Martinair Cargo and Zhao Fengsheng, SVP, China Southern Cargo, signed up to this new MoU at a ceremony in Guangzhou on October 11.

In September 2015 China Southern Airlines Cargo (CZ Cargo) and Air France KLM Martinair Cargo (AFKLMP Cargo) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) focused on strategic cooperation between the two parties. AFKLMP Cargo said in a press release that the two companies share the ambition to link their respective route networks, enabling them to offer expanded cargo services to their respective customers.

“Signing of this MoU leads to a new phase of cooperation between us, we anticipate concrete result coming out of this,” said Zhao Fengsheng, senior vice president of China Southern Cargo.

Marcel de Nooijer, executive vice president of AFKLMP Cargo said, “We continuously want to create more value to our customers, and in doing so we are very excited to deepen the cooperation with our strategic partner China Southern Cargo. This new phase is good news for our customers.”

Nooijer added that the carrier’s ambition for the next four years is to jointly investigate and exploit the available opportunities in the air cargo market. To achieve this, they plan to expand their existing cooperation and build on our mutual experience to connect their cargo business in China, Europe and beyond markets. This will also enable them to continue to use their membership of the SkyTeam Cargo Alliance to maximum advantage.

The carrier also aims connect CZ’s strong position in China and Asia Pacific region with AFKLMP’s strong position in Europe, Africa and the Trans-Atlantic area, possibly by sharing capacity and space agreements. Furthermore, it will combine CZ and AFKLMP Cargo networks (belly and main deck product) to offer high frequency services via our hubs at Guangzhou, Shanghai, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol. The cooperation will provide easy access to each other’s capacity within this combined network cooperation and explore each other’s ground service facilities at home base hubs, which might support quick interline transfers (one roof concept). It also intends to increase mail and express business opportunities between China, Europe and the USA. And all these efforts put together could lead to an integrated commercial and operational cargo cooperation model (Joint Venture) between Europe and China.