Lufthansa Cargo considers Malaysia an 'interesting market'

The recent announcement by MASKargo, the cargo arm of Malaysia Airlines, to discontinue its freighter service to Frankfurt has spurred interest in Malaysia by European carriers, including Lufthansa Cargo, which is closely monitoring the Malaysian market.

While Lufthansa Cargo does not operate an all-freighter service to Malaysia, Lufthansa Airlines has increased its five weekly flights to Kuala Lumpur to a daily flight now.

"Malaysia is an interesting market, with its strategic location, from the business point of view, within ASEAN.

"Of course, the decision by MASKargo to discontinue its three times a week freighter flights to Frankfurt has been taken by it, obviously, in its own interest," said Frank Bellner, a Singapore-based regional director (Southeast Asia/Australia) of Lufthansa Cargo, in an interview with Bernama.

Bellner is currently in Frankfurt to participate in the carrier's special conference on climate change and on reduction of aircraft emission.

"The whole of Asia, including Malaysia, is inherent with strong business potential," he added.

Lufthansa deploys the A34O aircraft on its daily passenger flights from Frankfurt to Kuala Lumpur, and cargo is also transported in the aircraft on these flights.

"The belly cargo volume transported on Lufthansa's passenger aircraft ranges between 70 and 100 tonnes a week.

"In terms of cargo volume, the passenger planes flying to Kuala Lumpur are full...the passenger capacity is also doing well," Bellner said.

He said that the outbound export cargo shipped from Malaysia included electronics, including parts and components, live animals and pharmaceuticals.

With Malaysia having graduated from a producer of low-end products to value-added products, the large part of the country's exports to Germany, Europe and further to North America comprise value-added and upper-end products.

However, one surprising element of recent Malaysian exports to Germany and most of the Eurozone countries is that export shipments had not been affected so far by the euro's depreciation against the greenback.

"We have not noticed much change so far in exports from Malaysia to Germany and other countries of the Eurozone," Bellner said.