Kuehne + Nagel’s strong air freight performance continued in the third quarter and tonnage has increased 16 per cent to 1.3 million tonnes during the period compared to the same nine months in 2017.
The Swiss freight forwarder said this was well above market growth with major contributions from industry-specific end-to-end solutions.
With the recent acquisition of Panatlantic’s business, a perishables air freight specialist in Ecuador, Kuehne + Nagel said it continues to strengthen its network in this segment after successfully completing the integration of CFI Commodity Forwarders, a leading perishables provider in the USA.
Air freight EBIT was up 19.4 per cent against the same period of the previous year at CHF 271 million (US$272 million). The conversion rate remained high at 30.3 per cent.
Overall in the first nine months of the year, Kuehne + Nagel has a whole, significantly increased EBIT by 8.8 per cent to CHF 745 million and earnings for the period in the first nine months of 2018 were up 7.4 per cent to CHF 580 million.
Kuehne + Nagel International chief executive officer, Detlef Trefzger said: “Kuehne + Nagel has continued its dynamic performance from the first half of the year into the third quarter and achieved a very positive result for the first nine months of 2018.
“The performance in the business units seafreight, airfreight and overland is remarkable. In contract logistics, results are as expected negatively affected by investments in the operation platform, which have been realised according to plan in this year. Based on the very good results of the first nine months, we expect this year to close successfully.”
