After a slight rebound in airfreight from LATAM to North America, and in a scenario of constant changes in capacity and rates, Bruno Acquarone Pan, Airfreight Director / SACO AIR LATAM, shares in this exclusive interview with the industry-specialized media outlet The Loadstar his insights on current challenges and how we are adapting our routes and services to secure space, optimize transit times, and offer more agile alternatives to our clients.
Northbound airfreight out of Central and South America reversed course in the second half of July, data from World ACD show.
Following 4% decline from the previous two weeks, ending on 6 and 13 July respectively, airfreight export tonnage to North America expanded 1% in the last two weeks of the month.
According to World ACD, the region’s overall airborne exports see-sawed throughout last month on a fortnightly basis, dropping from 5% expansion in the first week to 4% contraction the next, followed by an increase of 2% and a 1% slip.
Year on year, volumes stayed above 2024 levels, rising from 1% in the second week of July to 4% in the final week. This indicates growth in the market, as last year saw an augmented reliance on airfreight owing to reduced container shipping capacity, carriers having diverted vessels from the region to beef up capacity from Asia to Europe and North America.
With ocean carrier capacity restored to the region, some traffic has reverted back from air to ocean this year. Container Trade Statistics (CTS) figures reflect the increase in waterborne traffic to North America as carriers returned vessels to this tradelane earlier this year.
On an annual basis, northbound teu surged 17.2% and 16.4% respectively in January and April, and rose close to double digits in February and March. The momentum slowed in May, showing 1.2% year-on-year expansion, to 229,600 teu.
The resumption of container services to serve the more lucrative routes out of Asia has gone hand in hand with improved performance at Latin American gateways. Sea-Intelligence statistics show Latin American ports have dramatically improved their performance in recent months.
Schedule reliability on routes to North America rose from 51.1% in January/February to 81.3% in May/June, an improvement of 25.3% from a year prior. The average delay of late vessels shrank to 3.43 days, an improvement of 5.15 days.
Better performance also shows on Sea-Intelligence numbers for Latin American ports on routes to the Mediterranean, where schedule reliability improved 9.4% in May/June, to 81%. To North Europe, schedule reliability has improved sequentially since January, but was still 2% down year on year in May/June, at 73.7%
Notwithstanding the better performance, forwarders are still facing problems with ocean transport.
“There are still issues with schedules and changes in rotations,” reported Bruno Acquarone Pan, airfreight regional director, SACO Air LATAM of consolidator SACO Shipping.
Hapag Lloyd reported wait times of 22-24 hours at the port of Rio and 21-26 hours at Santos, but noted that both ports were “working normally”.
Securing airfreight lift has been challenging, Mr Acquarone reported, adding that this is a typical situation for this time of the year. World ACD statistics show relatively minor movement in capacity through July. On a two weeks over two weeks basis lift was unchanged during one week compared to the previous two, it was down 1% in two weeks and up 1% in the final week of the month. Year on year, capacity was slightly down in the first two weeks, but advanced 1% in the final two.
Airfreight pricing to North America did not change from one fortnight period to the next, until the final week of July, which saw a 1% increase, buoyed by a 2% rise from the third to the fourth week.
“Some airlines increased rates because of lack of space,” Mr Acquarone reported, adding that carriers were still willing to negotiate on pricing, which suggests they still had capacity to fill.
He expects this to deteriorate in the coming weeks, as the market enters what is traditionally the busiest quarter of the year. Once again, this will trigger a scramble for lift and ascending rates.
Given the heavy preponderance of routes to Miami, SACO has been working on building up Los Angeles ands New York as alternative gateways, which should result in faster transits, noted Mr Acquarone.
On the other hand, SACO intends to avoid Sao Paulo’s gateways of Guarulhos and Viracopos. While these have ample widebody connections suiting indirect routings, they tend to get very congested at this time, which jeopardises connections and risks shipments getting stuck there.
As far as demand is concerned, he does not see clear trends at the moment, but US tariff policies require close attention. The announcement of 50% tariffs on goods from Brazil, a politically motivated move, could trigger significant changes in north-south trade patterns, but, as with most tariff announcements from Washington this year, it remains to be seen if there will be further modifications
Source: https://theloadstar.com/air-trade-out-of-south-america-to-north-america-on-a-see-saw-in-july/
Author: By Ian Putzger Americas correspondent
07/08/2025