Lars has over 30 years’ experience in air freight, both as a key player in Cargo Sales at SAS, and in his current role as Air Cargo Manager at Copenhagen Airport. He works across every aspect of cargo at the airport, focussing on continuous improvement and consistently high standards as the airport strives to become the cargo hub of the region.

Tell us about your role

It’s my job to be a neutral facilitator to orchestrate the whole cargo area, and my focus is on developing the strategy and facilities for cargo. Cargo can make up 20% of all revenue on a long-haul flight and provides an attractive opportunity to add revenue for passenger airlines, so part of my team’s role is to provide materials showing the cargo potential for our key accounts at the airlines, both on belly capacity and for the pure freighter segment. Another important part of my role is support and dialogue with the integrators.

What’s your background?

Before joining Copenhagen Airport in June last year, I was Head of Cargo Sales, Scandinavia with SAS, working across Norway, Sweden and Denmark. It’s given me a deep understanding of the Scandinavian market, and more than 30 years’ experience in developing partnerships with direct shippers, airlines and freight forwarders.

What’s the best part of your job?

It’s an opportunity for me to influence the air cargo strategy at the airport, and the industry overall. I have a lot of ideas to create a state-of-the-art Copenhagen Airport, as we work towards becoming Northern Europe’s preferred cargo hub. To do this, all the stakeholders need to be included and we need to have clear dialogues to get the best results. In February 2019, we started CPH Cargo Community, a forum where we can discuss these issues and develop projects such as digitisation and pharma. From there we’ve organised into working groups with a mix of shippers, truckers, forwarders and IT vendors. It’s great to feel the support of the community, where everybody wants to improve the processes at the airport.

How do you see the future of cargo developing?

E-commerce especially is predicted to grow, with consumers able to deal directly with companies in the future. In my opinion, it will grow level with traditional air freight within the next 10 years. The Nordics is one of the largest e-commerce regions in the world and growing tremendously, and CPH is tactically placed to make the most of it. DHL Aviation is establishing their Northern European hub here at CPH, investing more than 1 billion DKK (1.5 million USD). One of the reasons why they chose Copenhagen was because it is a strategic location, from which you can reach over 70 million people overnight. It is well connected by road throughout Denmark, north Germany, Sweden and Norway, Poland and the Baltics.

What are you working on right now?

At the moment I am working on various priorities within our cargo strategy right now. We are also planning a Cargo Community event in a near future, where we’ll explore digitisation, pharma and the master plan for growing the airport. These areas will have a huge impact on what we’re doing in the future.

Meet the rest of the Route Development Team