Gateway to success

The air cargo industry in the Middle East is certainly not for the fainthearted. Instead, this increasingly fertile market provides opportunities galore for those who are proactive enough to grab them with both hands, and take a lead in developing facilities and services which will shape this young industry further in years to come.

As one of the leading cargo handling companies in the region, Dnata Cargo does not shy away from innovating, diversifying and expanding its portfolio of services - keen to put its stamp on the development of the fast-growing industry in the Middle East. In operation for more than forty years, Dnata Cargo has been expanding its impressive range of cargo services along the way.

Formed in 1959 by the Dubai government to operate at Dubai International Airport, the Dnata acronym originally stood for ‘Dubai National Air Travel Agency'. With its immense growth and increasing service portfolio, the acronym itself has now become a household name for the regional industry. "Our company is now commonly known as ‘DNATA' without referring to its original meaning anymore," admits senior vice president of Dnata Cargo, Jean Pierre L. De Pauw with a smile.

Dnata presently consists of several divisions, with the cargo division falling under Dnata Airport Services, the sole ground handler at Dubai International Airport.

Servicing in excess of 100 airlines operating at the airport, and around 1000 cargo agents based in Dubai, the company's reputation is well earned. Dnata Cargo is strategically located in every logistical hub of Dubai - from its Main Cargo Terminal (MCT) and Express Handling Centre (EHC) at Cargo Village, to the Free Zone Logistics Centre (FLC) at Dubai Airport Free Zone and the Free Zone Air Cargo Terminal (FACT) at Jebel Ali Free Zone. Combined, these four terminals alone handled 566,915 tonnes of cargo from April 2005 to March 2006.

De Pauw remembers the company's early years, taking its baby steps in a slowly burgeoning cargo industry and its fast-track development ever since. "Since 1991, the year that we opened the cargo village in Dubai, it has been quite a ride," he contemplates. "To be honest, we never had time to look back. During most years, we've had double digit growth, some years even more than 30%. Nobody in their wildest dreams would have predicted this kind of growth. We faced some challenges to keep pace with creating adequate and timely facilities and resources."

It's hard to believe that as recently as the mid-nineties, the north side of the airport was just a piece of desert. "I recall a brainstorming session with the DCA (Dubai Civil Aviation) on what we could do with this ‘spare' land. One of the accepted ideas was to develop the north side of the airport for Russian and CIS business, and this resulted a few years later in the opening of Terminal 2 (for passenger) and FLC I (for cargo)," says De Pauw.

As the Russian market tapered off, Dnata Cargo started tapping the charter markets and with this cargo flows to Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq also developed. De Pauw points out that DCA was fast recognising the growing importance of Dubai as a regional distribution hub in both sea and airfreight. The increasing recognition of the warehousing and distribution opportunities for high value and perishable goods, coupled with complementing the sea and road freight opportunities created by Jebel Ali Free Zone, eventually resulted in the creation of the Dubai Airport Free Zone and the FLC soon after. "FLC and its concept, now eight years old already, is today a well established entity with a regular following of airlines and agents," he says.

Infact the FLC is claimed to be the first low-cost terminal at a major airport. Since then, it has undergone an impressive multi-million dollar expansion to be barely recognisable in terms of the facilities it offers. Dnata Cargo now operates three such Free Zone Logistics Centres; FLC I facility (since 1999), FLC II (since 2002), and more recently FLC III in May this year. "These facilities cover a warehouse area of some 35,000m2 and also offer close to 7000m2 of office space to both airlines and agents operating from these facilities," elaborates De Pauw.

Comprising of 16,000m2 of warehousing and 10,000m2 of office space, the newest unit, FLC III, is a one-stop shop with a fully-automated air cargo storage and retrieval system handling facility and around the clock government import-export services. FLC III more than triples the annual throughput capacity of the FLC complex to 500,000 tonnes, raising the total complex facilities to 47,000m2 of warehousing and offices.

With the facilities in place to set up Dnata Cargo's expected growth until 2010 and beyond, the company is looking forward to a promising future. "Predictions are that with the buoyant and ever expanding city of Dubai and the booming region, air cargo will also continue growing and we are prepared for it," De Pauw says confidently.

Indeed, as part of preparing for this bright future, Dnata Cargo has recently renamed all of its cargo facilities as ‘Freightgates' to develop a new consistent corporate identity for its portfolio of terminals. Starting with FreightGate 1 at the Main Cargo Terminal at Dubai Airport, the other terminals are FreightGate 2, the Express Handling Centre at Dubai Cargo Village; FreightGate 3, the Economy Cargo Terminal at the FLC; FreightGate 4, the Agents' Terminal at the FLC; FreightGate 5, the Premium Cargo Terminal at the FLC; and FreightGate 6, the Offline Terminal at Jebel Ali Free Zone.

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