Fraport appoints Toepsch as VP cargo development

Airport operator Fraport has appointed Felix Toepsch as its new vice president of cargo development. Toepsch's appointment is immediate and he will be responsible for advancing the cargo business at Frankfurt Airport. He has a degree in business administration and has worked for Fraport since 2013 across a range of roles focusing on business and process development as well as innovation. Fraport chief operating officer Dietmar Focke said: "With Felix Toepsch, we've secured an experienced colleague who has years of experience at Frankfurt Airport and has built a wide network within the cargo community. "In this important role, Felix Toepsch will be able to draw on his experience in business development, digitisation, and process optimisation to develop FRA further and drive growth opportunities in the cargo business." Since January 2023, Felix Toepsch has been executive director of Air Cargo Community Frankfurt, where he has worked closely with airfreight businesses and institutions and represented the interests of more than 115 companies that make up the Air Cargo Community Frankfurt. "As part of his role, Felix Toepsch has backed the continued development of FRA as a leading European airfreight hub," Fraport added in a press release. "He has driven growth of the Air Cargo Community and has also been involved in implementing process and standardisation measures for airfreight at FRA. "Examples include the introduction of a common-use truck slot booking system and the implementation of community-wide standards for cargo procedures. Beyond Fraport and the Air Cargo Community, Felix Toepsch has been active in industry associations at the German and European levels." The appointment comes as Fraport has plans to grow cargo volumes by over 50%, reaching approximately 3m tons of airfreight per year by 2040.

No 'crazy' air cargo peak this year - consumer demand fails to take off

Air cargo is not expected to see a traditional peak season this year, softening consumer demand removing the catalyst for a major Q4 surge, despite booming hi-tech traffic providing a strong bedrock for the market. Forwarders expect some tightening in capacity and rates around China's Golden Week [early October] and again as Black Friday and Christmas approach, but say there is little evidence of the sharp increase in volumes and prices normally associated with peak season. One European forwarder told The Loadstar there would likely be "a slight uptick" towards Week 40, ahead of Golden Week, followed by additional volumes associated with Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Christmas. But he added: "For sure we do not expect a peak season with rates doubling or something like that. No crazy shit. Just normal, normal." The assessment is broadly reflected in Ti Insight's latest Air Freight Rate Tracker. While its survey found 68.7% of respondents expected some degree of rate increase in Q4, its own outlook is for a "measured" increase rather than a dramatic peak, with plentiful belly capacity and a lack of a traditional peak-season catalyst. "Very few people are talking about peak season," said Niall van de Wouw, chief airfreight for Xeneta, last month. "In all the conversations we've had with our shipper community, in only one was there talk of peak season charters." High-value B2B traffic, particularly semiconductors, servers, and AI-related equipment is providing underlying air cargo demand from Asia - but as structural rather than seasonal traffic, and it does not provide the consumer-driven surge traditionally seen as retailers stock up ahead of Black Friday and Christmas. China's latest figures show overall exports surged 25% year on year in August, but the growth was heavily skewed towards hi-tech products. In the first eight months, exports of mechanical and electrical products increased 21.9%, while integrated-circuit exports jumped 95.4%, according to China's General Administration of Customs. By contrast, exports of labour-intensive goods, including clothing, footwear, furniture, and toys, fell 0.6%. Indeed, toy exports were down 6.4% in January-August and footwear fell 4.7%, while clothing increased just 2.5%. Automatic data-processing equipment and parts, meanwhile, jumped 49.4%. There are signs of softness in Europe too. Eurostat reported that euro-area retail trade volumes fell 0.6% month on month in July, including a 1.4% decline in non-food products, while Germany alone recorded a sharp 3.4% fall in overall retail volumes. But hi-tech is booming: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing today reported August revenue of NT$514.81bn ($16.3bn), up 53.3% year on year, and up 10.1% on July, boosting revenue over the first eight months 39.3%. And the chipmaker has raised its 2026 capital expenditure budget to between $60bn and $64bn in response to the strong structural demand, being seen directly in the airfreight market. "AI, chips, it's in the market," the forwarder told The Loadstar, noting particularly strong demand out of Taiwan. But this demand has already been present for around a year, and remains relatively steady. "It's ongoing. It's pretty much at demand," he said, adding there could be some increase towards the end of the year as companies deployed remaining investment budgets. The forwarder added that customer forecasts were, similarly, offering little evidence of an impending surge, with some volumes stable and others perhaps 20% higher, but "nothing where I would say we have to turn things upside down". Ecommerce is also unlikely to provide the significant growth seen in previous peak seasons. The forwarder said the impact of changes to ecommerce regulations was difficult to assess, not least because some traffic could increasingly move as consolidated freight rather than identifiable individual ecommerce shipments. But the decline in some ecommerce volumes has already been accompanied by reductions in capacity, particularly at European gateways heavily exposed to the sector. "The volumes are gone, the capacity is gone," he said, pointing to Budapest and Liège in particular. Ti Insight similarly found that the global market was balancing out, with recent rate declines driven largely by improving capacity rather than a significant fall in overall demand. There are potential capacity constraints ahead. The forwarder noted that the switch from airline summer to winter schedules at the end of October would reduce belly capacity on some routes, particularly Europe-US, while allocations and block-space agreements would be reshuffled for the winter season. Rates could, therefore, still rise during Q4, particularly on tighter lanes, without the market experiencing a conventional peak. "I would wonder where a strong peak season could come from," said the forwarder.

The clash inside MSC - tensions on the rise

The tension building inside Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) remains hot property in our marketplace. Where there's smoke... And, just when you thought the MSC headline story of the week would be along the lines of 'MSC USA and away', for a number of reasons - most prominently (as one source put it): "A more corporate and financially disciplined approach to workforce management" - well, well, well... other noise came our way. Not all, but most of it, legacy M&A-related. Because to make a shipping-logistics ...