Lufthansa Cargo’s operating profit up 66%
Germany airline Lufthansa Cargo posted an operating profit of 135.6 million euros ($200 million) in 2007, an increase of 66.4 percent from 81.5 million euros in the previous year.
Revenue for the year dropped 3.8 percent to 2.74 billion euros ($4 billion). Shipments were up 2.6 percent to 1.8 million tons of freight and mail. Lufthansa Cargo’s capacity in 2007 was up 2.2 percent, while its cargo load factor climbed 1.4 percentage points to 69.1 percent.
'These figures substantiate the growth policy we are pursuing,” said Lufthansa Cargo Chairman Carsten Spohr. “The company has once again demonstrated impressively that we can still perform exceptionally even in difficult market conditions.'
The cargo carrier said it aims to grow marginally above the market average in the next few years and for fiscal 2008 expects to improve on last year’s result.
In a separate development, Andreas Jahnke has been appointed the new head of the Lufthansa Cargo Center in Frankfurt, effective April 1.
After beginning his professional career as a management consultant specializing in logistics and process optimization at the Boston Consulting Group, Jahnke in 2000 co-founded benelog, a Cologne-based company specializing in providing logistics services. In 2003, he joined the Kaufland company in Neckarsulm, where he set up an international unit responsible for the procurement of transport and logistics services. He subsequently moved to the Schwarz Group as general manager in charge of logistics in the Czech Republic. He is currently employed at the arvato logistics subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG.
As manager of the cargo center, Jahnke will be responsible for operating the world's biggest logistics center in the air freight industry. Built in 1982, the LCC in CargoCity North at Frankfurt Airport has an indoor floor space of about 70,000 square meters. About 1.56 million tons of air freight are transshipped at the LCC yearly, roughly 80 percent of the total tonnage carried by Lufthansa Cargo.