Was it worthwhile for the 90 or so attendees to take part in the seafood conference? What were the highlights in terms of content and what inspiration did the presentations and panels give those industry representatives present for their day-to-day work? CargoForwarder Global (CFG) spoke to three managers and asked them for their views on the event.
Lars Gotfredsen, Senior Air Cargo Manager, Copenhagen Airport
I had several reasons to attend the Seafood Air Logistics Conference. Firstly, I wanted to hear first-hand about the latest developments in this very dynamic and extremely important business sector and the impact on air freight. My expectations were high because the names of the experts announced by organizer, EuroAvia, in its program sounded very promising. And indeed, I can say that I am taking a wealth of information back to Copenhagen as a result of the conference.
Another very important reason, and this probably applies to the vast majority of participants, was the platform character of the meeting. Connecting with shippers, forwarding agents and representatives of airlines, and speaking with them face-to-face is practically only possible at events like this one here in Oslo.
As a consequence of the event, the question that arises for me in my role as Copenhagen’s responsible Cargo Manager, is whether we currently provide the market with sufficient capacity for handling freight shipments at Kastrup or whether we should expand the capacities. In particular, we should enlarge our facilities for handling temperature-critical products by building additional cool rooms. That is an aspect that we must quickly add to our agenda. Additional cool rooms are not only important for seafood, but also for pharmaceutical products. They have a high and growing significance for us due to the strong pharmaceutical cluster in the Copenhagen region and in neighboring Malmö, which stretches as far north as Gothenburg. Depending on how you count, 4 to 5 million people live there, so it is also a large consumer market with high purchasing power. What few people know: Denmark is the world’s seventh largest pharma producer.
Another important takeaway of the Oslo meeting is the fast ascent of e-commerce. Copenhagen Airport’s management is aware of this, but the dynamism of this business was impressively confirmed by many speakers at the meeting. Being the largest airport in Scandinavia, we want to step up our efforts to become a choice for e-commerce traffic.
This said, I finally would like to make a critical comment: To my taste, there were far too few seafood producers present. So, we heard too little from shippers about challenges and opportunities fostering the seafood business or slowing it down.
Nicklas Krandorf Head of Sales Scandinavia & Europe, SAS
I fully agree with Lars that we heard too little from salmon farmers and seafood shippers. How do they see the market? What are their expectations? Are they going to open sea/deep water to extend their business and relieve the fjords from fish farming? This environmental aspect is obvious, as the farms have a considerable ecological impact on the sea life in coastal waters. It is part of the entire picture and must therefore be addressed. Something that was only done very tentatively at best at the conference in Oslo, although sustainability was given a lot of space in most of the speeches and panels.
At the meeting, I was often asked what effects Air France-KLM’s financial investment in SAS (19.9%) has caused and how the change from the Star Alliance to the SkyTeam Group and SkyTeam Cargo has affected SAS’s policies. My answer to this is: So far there have been no visible effects. Of greater importance is our change in strategy from a carrier prioritizing business travelers, to a leisure carrier. Pre-Covid, routes to the Far East accounted for 30% of our entire intercontinental traffic, while 70% were operated Transatlantic. Today, the ratio is 15% East Asia and 85% North America.
We have concentrated long-haul traffic in Copenhagen, but continue to serve Oslo and Stockholm, offering intercontinental flights to those markets as well. As far as cargo is concerned, thanks to the modernizing of our long-haul fleet, we have increased the load capacity of our passenger aircraft to 23 tons per flight. We have also achieved this because we always keep an aircraft in reserve, in case a jetliner has to be grounded at short notice due to unforeseen or sudden events. This has significantly improved the punctuality rate.
Odd-Eirik Jenssen, Purchase & Sales Manager Fram Seafood AS
In my first ten years in the seafood business, we never talked about sustainability or environmental impacts caused by our daily doing. This has changed dramatically, mainly because customers put pressure on the industry, as do politicians. This started when the international Sushi wave began to roll some 20, 25 years ago. It is part of culinary globalization, triggered not only by its good taste, but also because swine fever, mad cow disease and bird flu have strengthened the trend towards fish. In Norway, this is now being thwarted by the government. A short while ago, the Finance Ministry imposed new taxes on the seafood industry, amounting to 25%. To date, it is still unclear if the tax is based on the retail price of shipments, or the annual profits made by salmon farmers.
The first consequence of this governmental announcement, is that the producers have slowed down their investments, including innovative sustainable measures. However, industry associations have managed to halve the tax bill from originally 35%-40% demanded by the Finance Ministry, to 25% today. Nevertheless, in view of the paramount importance of this industry for the entire country, the tax issue will be a major topic at the upcoming national elections on 08SEP25. And 25% may not be the last word.
