European Shippers' Council (ESC) is urging freight forwarders and airlines to adopt widely accepted Cargo 2000 performance standards.
The call came at the recent IATA World Cargo Symposium in Rome, where Secretary General of the ESC, Nicolette van der Jagt, complained that "few shippers understand what Cargo 2000 is or have even heard of the performance measures being implemented around the world", adding that only 17 airlines and seven freight forwarders have certified as Cargo 2000 compliant.
Cargo 2000 was set up to implement standard measures for benchmarking performance, in a bid to foster continuing quality improvement within the freight forwarding industry.
"If shippers are aware of this then they can force those carriers and freight forwarders not in Cargo 2000 to join or risk losing their business to those that are," said an ESC statement.
The symposium track session on Cargo 2000 reported on the progress that was being made by its members to implement the phase one programme for airport to airport performance monitoring and the phase two programme for monitoring shipments from origin to destination.
"We are pleased to hear that significant progress is being made, in particular with a second freight forwarder, to reach phase two operations in the air freight quality initiative Cargo 2000, but disappointed we have not been kept closer to the story in order to inform shippers," said the ESC.
IATA, according to the ESC, supports the Cargo 2000 initiative for the freight forwarding community worldwide. It anticipates that through the "Cargo" programme initiated by Cargo 2000, IATA would also become Cargo 2000 certified and could implement performance monitoring if they use Cargo 2000 airline members.
"ESC will also promote further to its members the benefits of using Cargo 2000 members," the release added. |
