On Air Cargo Conference 2025

Beginning of September we got to attend the 10th Air Cargo Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. There was around 400 participants from cargo, logistics, airports and related companies. The event was hosted in the Frankfurt football stadium, included a main stage next to the football field and a secondary stage inside the building. 

The 10th Air Cargo Conference was hosted in Frankfurt's football stadium.

We got to both listen in to some of the talks and had some engaging conversations with other participants. Our favorite parts were the panel discussions between leaders of cargo companies and the great many things we learned about global trade. In this blog post we want to go through some of the highlights of what we saw and learned there.

Panel discussion on AI and automation in air cargo industry.

What we felt was a highlight, is the panel discussion about AI and automation in air cargo industry. Panelists from different companies talked about what automation initiatives are happening in their organisations and talked about what they think the future will look like for them. Here, we want to briefly summarize a few of the statements that were made, which we felt were interesting. A common expectation was that automation will take over many of the repetitive tasks that are common in air cargo today, one panelist said he expects about ~80% of such tasks, which currently are done manually, will be automated using some form of AI in the coming years.

A panelist from Saudia Cargo talked about how there currently is a large AI rollout initiative at Saudia. An explicit use case that was mentioned is the handling of incoming E-Mails by AI tools. We have seen this use case at many companies before, there are other ways to make an order for an air freight, but apparently customers simply prefer to write E-Mails the way they did for many years. About 3 to 4 thousand E-Mails per day is what Saudia handles, huge potential for automation. 

The way in which AI and automation is to be implemented is preferably using low-code platforms like UiPath. There was a panelist from UiPath present, who talked about how one should not just start implementing automation, but have an actual strategy for it. An interesting use case that was brought up was an UiPath agent, that in real time looks up current tariff tables. Tariffs and their effect on trade was a topic which came up frequently in most of the talks and discussions. "Only an AI can keep track of what is happening right now". 

A panelist from KLM cargo talked about their use of AI, and how they were suprised at how well AI can help automation much of the daily communication tasks. They are however careful in their rollout, as they don't wan to scare customers with AI responses. The ultimate test or "holy grail" of an AI agent was presented in the use case, "hey agent, this fight got cancelled, please move and distribute all it's cargo to other flights". If and when agentic AI has matured enough to reliably handle this case remains to be seen. There was more talk about the future, e.g. how different AIs will interact with each other, ones all the companies are having their own AI, or what the expectation is around energy consumption, given how everyone wants to become more sustainable and AI, as of now, is still very energy consuming.

Many talks, including the one by Commerz Bank economists, discussed the effects of tariffs on global trade, and how markets and global wealth will be affected by them.

One of the most interesting talks of the event, was by a senior economist from commerce bank, talking about trends in global trade and it's effect on cargo industries. Details included Europe's weakening role on global trade, even within the European union trading with itself. The economists at commerce were surprised to find a 100% hit rate on countries that reduced car imports from Germany while increasing car imports from China. Every country they looked into had this be true about them. It is not really surprising though, when knowing that China produces some of the highest quality electric cars, German car companies are late to the electric car party, and the world as a whole wants more of them. 

A later panel discussion on global trade and its observable trends included views on the effect of the tarrifs. Participants expect new trading routes via South America, and some examples were given of products, that used to come from United States to Europe, but are now sourced from Colombia instead.

Air cargo companies understand that global supply chains actually create more markets. And a common view included that locations in middle east are seen as one of the best place for trading hubs in the future. Roughly summarized, the expectations are that the global role of the US will get smaller, China will keep its current role and steer more towards emerging markets like Africa and south America. US American consumers will have a reduced access to global goods and services. European exports will not grow.

A couple of air cargo success stories were presented. Including Canadian pork being flown instead of shipped or fresh French wine being made available to a world wide audience.

A speaker from TIACA (the international air cargo association) told the story of a Canadian pork producer, who was in the business of shipping chilled pork to south Korea via cargo ships. They transformed their business to using air freight instead, and even though by air is more expensive than by ship, they ended up increasing their profits because they could now sell fresh pork, which is worth more than the chilled pork. A success story for air cargo, the producer and the Korean customers, who get to enjoy a better product.

Personally, we felt a bit conflicted about it. For one, we are vegetarian, and second, is "Koreans having fresh Canadian Pork at their disposal" really enough of a win, that it justifies the increase in carbon emissions that this switch has brought? Carbon emissions in general were not a topic discussed at the event. Aside from cargo companies looking forward to more SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel).

First time we saw someone compare "introducing AI" to "climbing Mount Everest"

The CEO of onestoptransformation gave a talk about AI and digital mindset. In this talk he spent he good portion of the time comparing the introduction of AI by businesses to the climbing of Mount Everest. The talk taught next to nothing about AI, instead the intent was to make participants be interested in AI using metaphors and phrases: "be open like a parachute, towards AI" and "say Hi to AI". We've seen talks like that before and have a hard time imagining that there's anyone who finds them engaging.