Liege reports record cargo volumes for 2021

The record volumes follow on from record years in 2020 and 2019.

The increase comes as the industry has witnessed an increase in the use of freighters due to the Covid-related reduction in passenger (and therefore bellyhold) flying.

The airport’s chief executive, Laurent Jossart, said: “The global disruption of supply chains, and the lack of air-transport capacity in the holds of passenger aircraft, are trends that emerged in 2020 and that have also spurred our growth in 2021.

“Humanitarian equipment, the pharmaceutical sector and healthcare (masks, vaccines, medicines) are the main market segments.”

Jossart said the airport’s focus on multimodal transport had also helped boost demand.

“Thanks to our multimodal approach, Liege Airport and the logistics sector had anticipated being at the centre of European cross-border trade,” he said.

“The growth in the amount of rail freight coming into the Liege Logistics terminal has been outstanding.

“Between them, the Liege rail terminals, which have connections to China, handled 16,103 containers in 2021, an increase of almost 70% over the numbers for 2020. That’s 172,893 tonnes, both for imports and exports (+66%), with significant growth in the number of full containers for export.”

The number of aircraft movements has also increased, with 45,699 movements in 2021 (13.4% more than the 40,301 figure for 2020). The number of cargo-aircraft movements rose from 34,310 in 2020 to 38,393 last year, an increase of 12%.

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