Belli at CAPA Airline Leader Summit Australia Pacific 2024
Belli builds cargo software for the world's fastest airlines. As part of our commitment to shaping the future of air freight, Co-Founder Alex Khor took the stage at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Australia Pacific 2024 in Brisbane to moderate a critical industry discussion on regional cargo dynamics.
About CAPA
CAPA – Centre for Aviation is a global authority on aviation intelligence and market analysis. Its flagship summits bring together airline CEOs, logistics operators, and executive leaders to dissect emerging trends, market shifts, and technological advancements across global supply chains.
Regional Cargo in Focus
Alex Khor, Co-Founder of Belli, moderated the panel discussion "Regional cargo in focus - where is the industry placed as the market turns again?" alongside key leaders across regional logistics and aviation: Alvin Tay (Atlas Air), Sara Hales (Hales North), Peter Negline (Macrolytics), and Nigel Chynoweth (Cathay Cargo).
Together, the panelists explored how the Asia-Pacific air cargo sector is adapting to post-pandemic market dynamics. The conversation focused on the rapid expansion of e-commerce, cold chain logistics, and pharmaceutical transport, while examining how modern digitalization and sustainability initiatives are actively reshaping the regional supply chain.
The panel discussed the massive impact of rapid e-commerce expansion, driven by platforms like Temu and Shein, on global air lift demand, as well as the unique role of freight forwarders in handling Australia's high volume of perishable exports.
The conversation also tackled critical supply chain realities, including aging widebody freighter fleets, delayed aircraft conversions, and the practical challenges of implementing digital workflows and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandates across regional networks.
Alex Khor: "Research shows that when Temu enters a new market, air capacity to European countries triples overnight, and we expect e-commerce volumes to stabilize around one-third of global volume in the coming years."
Nigel Chynoweth: "I think finally, an adoption of digitization... COVID did give us that springboard and gave a lot of the stakeholders that experience of what the benefits of digitization were. We're on a very fast journey now to get the benefits of that."
Alvin Tay: "No one heard about Temu until last year's Super Bowl, but today they are in 50 countries. They are flying almost 70 aircraft a day... If you take about 100 aircraft just flying e-commerce, that is a very significant proportion of the lift."
Sara Hales: "In Australia, 50% of our air freight export product is perishable in nature, and for those perishable goods, a lot of the time freight forwarders are involved in doing essential goods handling services... That's a level of risk and complexity that a lot of perishable shippers don't want to do themselves."
Peter Negline: "The profitability of the air freight businesses just shot up through the roof as a whole compared to the drought or the losses that were accumulating in the passenger business. So we have that sort of recent historical position where the airlines all of a sudden realized that actually this cargo business is something that we really should pay more respect to."
Alvin Tay: "Whenever we fly something between two countries that have signed up for CORSIA, we have to actually purchase carbon offset. So I think that is really something that as an industry we do have to play our role to create that green supply chain."