Swissport Wins Ground Handling Award

April 30, 2013
The win marks the first time that a ground handling category was added to the Air Cargo News awards.

Swissport International Ltd, the world’s leading provider of ground and cargo services to the aviation sector, has won the Ground Handling category of the Cargo Airline of the Year Awards 2013, the first time that these prestigious awards have included a Ground Handling category. The award from Air Cargo Media Group, publisher of the highly respected newspaper Air Cargo News, follows a rigorous judging process by a panel of independent experts that analysed Swissport’s global performance, quality standards, and initiatives to
improve its services to customers.

The judges agreed that Swissport Cargo Services had demonstrated a series of exceptional achievements across its business over the last 12 months. Those are embracing substantial progress in quality and performance initiatives, process standardisation, technological innovations, network expansion, and enhancing customer relationships and services, along with internal initiatives to optimise its levels of efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Examples include major progress within the air cargo industry’s Cargo 2000 (C2K) quality initiative, where Swissport has taken leadership among cargo handlers worldwide. Training initiatives like rolling out its New Cargo Technical Training Programme worldwide, while key technology innovations included the development of a mobile (smartphone or tablet) version of Swissport’s industry-leading Freightfinder track-and-trace service. Swissport’s acquisition of Flightcare in Spain and Belgium last year further expanded the group’s cargo network and capabilities, and the company also opened various cargo handling operations around the world to support the growth of customers.

The award was presented at a glittering event in London on April 27, to John Batten, Swissport International’s Executive Vice President Global Cargo. He commented: “I am immensely proud to receive this award on behalf of all our employees worldwide, who have achieved a lot during the past year. Among our many achievements I am particularly proud of our progress within Cargo 2000, where Swissport has taken the initiative from talk to action, embedding it at the core of service performance management.

“We must never rest upon our successes and we are relentlessly looking at our  business to further develop and adapt to continuously improve our service performance and introduce new innovations and solutions for customers, and so I am  confident that we can maintain our leadership within the sector in offering the highest quality and best value cargo handling services to customers around the world.”

Swissport International Ltd. provides ground services for around 118 million passengers and 3.5 million tonnes of cargo a year on behalf of some 650 client-companies in the aviation sector. With a workforce of around 40,000 personnel, Swissport is active at 192 stations in 38 countries on five continents, and generates annual consolidated operating revenue of CHF 1.9 billion. www.swissport.com