Express frieght services: truly global

Air France KLM has daily flights from Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle airport or Amsterdam to the whole of Europe, to Asia, North, Central and Latin America and Africa. Once or twice a day, from Mondays to Sundays, aircraft from the leading European air group, also rated third in the world in terms of traffic, connect the world’s major capitals and metropolises. When it observed the 1,000 daily flights from Europe (500 from Roissy CDG), transporting passengers around the world, Air France realised in 1988 that this huge potential could be used for other activities. Sodexi was created on the strength of this original concept. The incumbent French air transport operator holds 60% of the company, Geopost, a subsidiary of the La Poste group whose holdings also include Chronopost, 20%, and TAT, a specialist in air transport and parcel services, the remaining 20%.

“The idea was to set up a worldwide network for urgent deliveries of goods, including the transport, customs clearance and delivery. The aim is to offer seamless service for customer-exporters wishing to send goods in the shortest possible time, including the formalities,” explains Sodexi’s Managing Director, Jean-François Bouilhaguet. The wide-ranging network connections offered by Air France KLM flights enable the company to meet this objective. Sodexi has set up a 20,000 sq m hub under Customs authority at Roissy CDG airport, where 450 experienced employees work around the clock. Parcels and packages are handled, controlled and checked at the hub before being dispatched, mainly on Air France KLM passenger flights (80%), but also on other airlines such as the Scandinavian SAS, the German carrier Lufthansa or Swiss Air.

Apart from the flights from Roissy CDG, Sodexi also takes advantage of the extremely dense network resulting from all the partnerships established between Air France KLM and the other foreign airlines. In this way, once the goods dispatched by Sodexi arrive abroad, they transit easily throughout North America via Delta Air Lines, or Russia via Aeroflot, and in the same way in most European cities using each country’s domestic flights (Alitalia, CSA Czech Airlines, etc.). Mr Bouilhaguet continues: “Sodexi was founded in the perspective of the gradual integration of passenger airlines, with the mission to develop technical facilities on the ground so that freight can transit as quickly as possible from one aeroplane to another, but also to deal with customs clearance and fast delivery. This is why we had to appoint operators in each country, throughout the sprawling air network, capable of receiving and handling the final logistics to ensure that the freight arrives in good time at its destination.”

From collection to delivery
The Match+Network system, as Sodexi calls it, consists in a series of partnerships with leading express freight handlers throughout the world, enabling the company to deliver seamless, door-to-door express services. These specialists in logistics collect the freight leaving their country, handle customs clearance and parcel delivery to the areas they cover. A major player in North America, FedEx, is Sodexi’s supplier for the United States and Canada, like OCS in Japan, Garantpost in Russia, BHT in China, and other operators such as Lynx and TNT worldwide. In the Middle East, Sodexi works with Aramex, the region’s leading express freight handler. With 4,500 employees, Aramex offers comprehensive services that enable Sodexi to extend its offerings to Middle Eastern countries.

For the company in Jordan, which is listed on the Dubai stock exchange, this partnership saves it from making heavy investments for the acquisition and maintenance of a fleet of aircraft which, as the M.D of the subsidiary of Air France points out: “would in any case have been insufficient to offer a global express freight service. Whereas, in the best of circumstances, express handlers could only acquire about ten aircraft, we offer them a connection with our world network of airlines, which enables them to focus on the sales side of their business in their region.” Sodexi has not developed its business model in the same way in Africa, due to the scarcity of specialist transport companies. Once again, the great advantage for the French company was to be able to count on Air France’s traditional air traffic between Roissy CDG and the French-speaking African capitals.

A subsidiary, Express Integration, was created by Sodexi and the Bolloré group, a transport specialist already present in Africa, each holding 50% of the capital. The former deals with the international transport, whereas the latter handles customs clearance and delivery to the different African towns and cities. Through this effective partnership, Express Integration has quickly become the leader in express freight services in the geographical area. To such an extent that: “the major operators such as FedEx and TNT subcontract their deliveries to Africa to our subsidiary,” explains Jean-François Bouilhaguet.

Partners with international freight companies
Far from the idealized advertising campaigns run by the international express freight companies, showing a smiling uniform-clad delivery man rushing to deliver a parcel on the other side of the world, Sodexi’s Managing Director describes the express delivery sector in far more pragmatic terms. “There are not enough goods to be transported urgently worldwide to justify a network of freight aircraft of a similar size to the passenger air network. This means that the express freight specialists will never have the networking facilities and connections to offer international delivery in 24 or 48 hours as we do with the Air France KLM lines. The major players such as UPS, FedEx and DHL, which invest massively in marketing their products, sometimes have just one departure per day from Paris, and then only on five days a week.”

This message is particularly aimed at professionals in the transport sector: Sodexi does not sell an product or a brand, so it prefers to contact specialists in logistics worldwide who lack solutions to meet their export clients’ needs in terms of express transport, even on a one-off basis. For example, Sodexi is capable of joining with other transport companies to help them respond to calls to tender. This solution enables logistics specialists who offer optimal maritime, road or air services, such as Geodis or Schenker, to offer comprehensive services by adding high quality international express delivery services to their own offerings. Sodexi has made considerable investments in computer systems to ensure that there are no breaks in the connection between the regional transport companies’ databases and the hub at Roissy CDG.

The freight is bar-coded for tracking from collection at the exporters’ premises through to final delivery. Backed by Air France KLM software infrastructures, Sodexi can provide information on the delivery in real time and, in the event of problems, warn about delays or any other unforeseen circumstances. Sodexi’s close relations with its international transport company clients have given birth to Express Supermarket, a building where the Air France subsidiary houses a “community” of players from the transport world (350 employees). With private offices, the partners have a direct contact with Sodexi’s personnel who ensure the complete transparency of all transactions. This truly international logistics centre, meeting point for skilled staff from all over the world, makes Sodexi far and away the leading French express freight operator.

Logistics solution for e-business
The rapid emergence of electronic business, with all it entails in terms of parcel deliveries, gave Sodexi food for thought. Backed by a comprehensive express airfreight network, mainly based on Air France KLM passenger airlines, Sodexi quickly realised the potential of this new business. The express carrier now handles international deliveries for the major retailers with on-line stores, particularly for deliveries to Africa and Asia. Aware of the technical problems with data transmitted by internet to geographical areas such as Africa and shortcomings in terms of security, a few months ago Sodexi launched expressmarket.biz. This logistics solution for internet and mail-order sales initially consisted in setting up agencies in the heart of all the French-speaking African cities.

Already present in Abidjan, Lomé, Cotonou and Antananarivo, expressmarket.biz welcomes local and expatriate customers wanting to order articles on the internet and have them delivered within 72 hours, without having to worry about the infrastructure problems in their respective countries. Partnerships with various leaders in the on-line retail and mail-order markets also enable customers to consult product catalogues directly in the agency in digital format. Among them, there are already about thirty companies of different nationalities, including many European firms (3 Suisses, Sennheiser, Radiospares, etc.). The expressmarket.biz agencies handle the order taking, currency conversion when applicable and the payment of invoices (including transport costs).

Once the transaction has been made, Sodexi deals with the transport directly from the retailer’s logistics centre to the agency, where the customer comes to pick up the goods 72 hours later. Sodexi would like to consolidate this new concept and take it to other regions of the world. Asia and Russia are already part of the transport company’s strategy. Through expressmarket.biz, Sodexi is anxious to attract the attention of manufacturers in the electronics or mechanics sectors where, although the firms are keen to expand to certain exotic destinations, they do not intend to make heavy commercial investments.