ANNUAL REPORT ‘12
BUSINESS REVIEW
58
But increases in the number of flights and the creation
of new routes led to significant growth in airfreight in
the Angolan and Middle-Eastern markets.
Contrasting with the economic downturn registered
at the other airports, Porto airport grew by 1.3%,
a reflection of the new Porto-Luanda route by TAAG
and the positive performance of the TNT and DHL
integrators.
The new Lisbon-Dubai route operated by Emirates
eased the negative trend in the second half of 2012
(-4.2% vs. -6.1% in the first half), offsetting the
declines in traffic with Brazil, Europe and the domestic
islands in the Atlantic.
Besides the Angolan market already mentioned, which
grew by 4,703 tonnes (+40.3% year on year), the
Imports were 11.1% lower year on year, representing
42% of the total cargo handled at the airports. Exports,
however, rose by 2.4%, accounting for 58% of the
total. Tonnage increased by 3.49 p.p. over 2011,
totalling 83.2 thousand tonnes, as shown here.
The fall in air freight is also due in part to the greater
use of trucks to collect and distribute cargo throughout
Europe. This is part of the logistics strategy of large
multinational companies, taking advantage of the
convergence in central Europe of the capacity of the
airfreight and full-service carriers that support the
Europe-Asia and Europe-America axes.
Added to that is the growing use of plane-trucks
3
,
which hauled over 30 thousand tonnes of cargo in
2012, as illustrated on the graph on the right:
_Exports
58%
42%
_Imports
83,167 Tonnes
(+2.4%)
59,471 Tonnes
(-11.1%)
_Tonnes
151,610
30,400
_Tonnes
83%
17%
Angola
4,703
40.3
United Arab Emirates
1,214
1,610.0
Belgium
347
4.4
Venezuela
241
23.2
Mozambique
231
14.1
Var. 12/11 (%)
Var. 12/11 (tonnes)
3
Airfreight carried over land by truck, which is assigned the flight number of an airline company.
