SHIPCO TO HANDLE ‘sECOND-TIER CUSTOMER BASE? FOR SAS

SHIPCO TO HANDLE ôSECOND-TIER CUSTOMER BASEö FOR SAS    Shipco Airfreight, a neutral air-cargo consolidator, will serve as the sole agent for Scandinavian Airlines System’s small to mid-sized freight forwarder customers in the U.S. Northeast.
   “The scope to further develop our business in the Northeast region was key for SAS,” said Ed Walsh, SAS sales manager for the East Coast region. “Shipco’s extensive customer base — including clients that we simply don’t have the capacity to reach — is now open to us. At the same time, we can devote more time to our tier one customers.”
   “The fact that we already utilize the SAS terminal at Newark (N.J.) for air freight handling meant that we already had a strong mutual cooperation,” said Kim Ekstroem, vice president for Shipco Air.
   Shipco will take care of the cargo requirements of SAS’s so-called “second-tier customer base”, from booking the cargo with SAS through to local pick up and delivery, and accounting. SAS will refer all small to mid-sized forwarders in the region to Shipco.
   SAS executives said they had already experienced success with this cargo service model in the United Kingdom.
   “The success of that encouraged us to develop an equivalent here in the U.S.,” said Howard Jones, director of cargo for SAS in North America. “Shipco’s business philosophy very much reflects our own and that was key in our decision process, to ensure that our existing clients receive a mirror of the service levels that they would expect from ourselves.”