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Customers of ACL Airshop often praise its speed of service, and speed is in the company’s DNA, as CEO Steve Townes and the team showed off when hosting its press conference at the WCS. The company is growing rapidly, exceeding what were already ambitious growth plans.
The network has grown as it has undergone a drastic transformation over the last six years. Townes said, “Our customers said in surveys that we love you in 22 cities, we’d like you more in 32 cities, now we’re in 55 cities and we are continuing to march down that road. The bigger we make our network, the more convenient we are for our customers.”
This is important as ACL is the only independent company specialising in one-way leasing, with Townes pointing out you can pick up a unit in Singapore and drop it off in Los Angeles, as an example.
“We have deployable inventory and a big network, and we’ve got the DNA in our organisation that knows how to handle that daily rugby scrum,” explained Townes.
Other companies offer short-term leasing solutions but ACL dominates this market, said Townes. “Short term leasing solutions means that you have to have a big inventory that is deployable at short notice and you have to have the commercial savvy to handle it the right way,” he told the audience of journalists, partners, and even a couple of rivals who sat in listening, to which Townes says, “Our competitive actions are always proprietary and confidential, but even if they have your recipe, they won’t bake the same cake.”
To reinforce that ACL are the “kings, as he called the team, of short-term leasing,” Townes said, “We have short-term solutions for you, especially with pallets but also with containers, especially when you need a few in a pinch or during times of increased turbulence and demand in the marketplace.”
A portfolio of long-term, multi-year ULD management contracts have been added, something which expanded rapidly when it gained a new majority shareholder in April last year. Alinda Capital Partners, now rebranded as Astatine Investment Partners, have substantial shareholdings in other aviation businesses including London’s Heathrow Airport.
Praising Astatine, Townes said, “Last year, we had a growth budget, and we knew we were going to keep following our customers as the market keep turbulating, is that even a verb? Probably not … anyway, we budgeted $8m of growth CAPEX last year. We invested $18m and they didn’t even blink, they said do more, keep growing, we like what you’re doing, you’re on the right track, you’re performing well against our original investment thesis in your company and you’re still on a good trajectory.”
Townes jokes that this is the first time in 32 years that he has not been a slave to private equity, saying, “Astatine are a hybrid infrastructure investment group, which is refreshing.”
Technology is key. Five years ago, ACL started a multi-year technology investment roadmap, and said a company could not be a market leader if it was not a technology leader. Four years ago, ACL was the first in market with Bluetooth tracking and tracing, adding to its own ULD Control capabilities. In November 2020 they won an industry Innovation Award for their efforts, and those investments continue.
In customer surveys, a constant theme is ACL’s quick response rate, with several calling it the company’s best feature.
The secret weapon? Townes said it was the high-performance culture throughout the entire company.
“Our folks in dozens of cities around the world know that they don’t have to ask permission from six different committees to get something done. If they have a customer request, if it’s fast and I need it now, make the decision, you’re going to get backed up all the way to the CEO’s desk,” Townes said.
To sum it up, “People are the priceless soul of any successful enterprise and we are doing that in spades.”
Other ACL executives spoke. Wes Tucker, Chief Operating Officer for the Americas said what he was most proud of was converting or adding a dozen new airlines and multi-year deals on 38,000 ULDs to its network, unprecedented growth figures in the company’s history. It was helped by the new majority shareholder who said, “get those long-term contracts.”
Jos Jacobsen, Managing Director of Global Leasing and Chief Operating Officer for the Eastern Hemisphere added that the growth could only be done with ease of leasing and helping customers be more efficient. ACL has created a digital suite to provide 100% visibility and end-to-end control of ULDs.
“If they [the customers] become more efficient, everybody becomes more sustainable, which is an important aspect of ULD control, using a digital suite and managing your fleet in a better way so it becomes a sustainable effort for your company,” he said.
Mark Edwards, Managing Director for Asia Pacific operations was next, saying, “Everyone knows that Asia Pacific is one of the main engines of airfreight, it’s not firing on all cylinders at the moment because of the situation in China and that is affecting us along with everyone else in the airfreight industry.”
The region is bigger than China, and ACL have just concluded a long-term deal with a start-up cargo airline in Vietnam. ACL is at 17 airports in the region but still in growth mode and looking at moving into Jakarta in the near future.
Maurice van Terheijden, Managing Director EMEA shared further expansion news, telling the audience that India is a country that needs equipment, so was happy to tell the audience that stations will be opening in Mumbai and Delhi in the coming months. Istanbul will follow and there will be more stations in the future.
At the 2016 WCS in Berlin, ACL announced ambitious growth plans of doubling all metrics within five years. It has exceeded that and came out of Covid very strongly; 2021 was a record year and this year is looking like another 20% and Townes predicts that next year will be equally strong.
He said, “We all have the same headwinds, we all read the same headlines in the news about geopolitics, but world trade is not stopping. Things might be contracting a bit or getting a little slow but our attitude is that when things become turbulent or troubled in a marketplace, there are winners and losers. It is our intention to use the huge resources of our majority shareholder and the amazing people resources of the ACL Airshop team around the world to maintain momentum, carefully.”
This article was published in the October issue of Air Logistics International, click here to read the digital edition and click here to subscribe.