Franz Heuckeroth van Hessen took over as Liège Airport’s new vice president air services on 1 May. The former director at Germany’s Cologne-Bonn Airport tells Airside about the big plans that the Belgian airport operator has for expansion over the next couple of years
Van Hessen will be working closely with the airport’s vice president commercial, Steven Verhasselt. While Verhasselt will concentrate on commercial development, van Hessen will be focusing his efforts on product development. That means maximising the potential of the various ‘verticals’ in which Liège Airport already handles a lot of business and with regard to which the potential is perceived as particularly healthy.
Thus, for example, Liège Airport already handles significant volumes of perishables, especially flowers. It also processes a large number of very specialist horse shipments, for which it is exceptionally well equipped. It also has a state-of-the-art temperature-controlled cool station for valuable pharma shipments.
For the future, e-commerce is going to become ever more important to global trade flows, and Liège Airport is eyeing the enormous volumes of shipments that this business will generate through gateways that are sufficiently both well-positioned and well-organised to handle them.
“We have a dominant role to play in this field of business,” van Hessen explains. “E-commerce requires swift and controlled processes on-airport, and efficient data exchange. We are working heavily on this.” Liège brands this effort under the ‘Flexpress’ banner, a combination of ‘flexibility’ – a “signature” of Liège Airport’s operations, van Hessen says – and ‘express’.
Liège has plenty of experience in the express field, having been the long-time European base of TNT Airways. And here too lies another focus for van Hessen. He is the airport’s point of contact for its liaison with FedEx as it goes through the process of integrating TNT within its huge organisation (FedEx officially acquired TNT in a 4.4 billion [US$5.1 billion] Euro deal in May last year).
“We will support FedEx in this process, we will do everything we can from our side to facilitate that process of integration at Liège,” van Hessen informs. He has high hopes that FedEx will realise the value of the gateway, the importance of the role that Liège has played as the TNT Euro hub, and the end result for the airport will actually be increased express volumes.
Building on strength
These big plans for the future will build in large part on what van Hessen sees as the inherent advantages that the airport possesses – for example, its location in the heart of the centre of European industry and trade: north-western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France. That location also boasts exceptional connectivity of all modes of transport, as well as 24/7 non-slotted aviation operations.
Liège Airport’s business is well supported by a Belgian Government keen to boost trade and travel, while it already has the airside infrastructure to handle large numbers of cargo and passengers. And that infrastructure is being expanded rapidly. For example, the expectation is that no less than 1,000 acres of airport land is to be developed over the next couple of years just for cargo-related infrastructure.
Whatever the future might hold, van Hessen reports: “It’s exciting times, this is a great job.”
