Once again, another year is coming to an end, and it is time to reflect a little on the achievements of ULD CARE over the past 12 months.

First, with Covid disappearing steadily into the rearview mirror, it has been very encouraging to see the global air cargo industry generally doing well. Hopefully, this will encourage the industry to give serious consideration to improving the way operations are carried out, particularly when it comes to ULD.

And here we can say, with a great deal of confidence, that ULD CARE continues to support industry development with its program of solutions.

E-UCR program

First in our solutions portfolio is the E-UCR program. Over the past 12 months, this program has achieved several major milestones. The biggest being going live on July 1 and replacing the legacy system which was certainly due for retirement.

The new system offers so much more than its predecessor. Not only replacing and upgrading the traditional interlining function but also expanding the system functionality to cover all kinds of ULD transfers of custody. The largest being the airport multimodal activity involving freight forwarders.

We are particularly pleased to say that we have been able to reach this point while maintaining our community approach. Staying away from any kind of external commercial involvement in the project and instead achieving it through our own human and financial resources along with the contributions of our members. It is this approach that makes ULD CARE stand out in this industry.

To support this activity, ULD CARE has created ULDigital, a Hong Kong registered JV company in which we own 60% while our IT partner owns 40%. One advantage of this new company is that, in 2025, we will be applying for government funding support for our ongoing digital initiatives.

We would encourage our readers to take a look at the system: 

And we are far from finished. We have a considerable list of system enhancements we would like to implement when we have the resources available. One of those enhancements is the potential reemergence of RFID tagging for ULD and particularly pallets.

Anybody who has been around for a while knows there has been a decades-long discussion around the use of RFID with little in the way of outcomes. However new technology, in the form of advanced chips, can now deliver an RFID tag that is less than 2 mm thick and yet can work on close to metal surfaces while delivering a read distance of up to 1 metre. We’ve been able to carry out some practical tests on actual pallets as you can see here.

Coupled with the correct apps, we believe that this technology can bring some very significant efficiency improvements to ULD operations both on the truck dock with digital UCR’s and on the aircraft with loading verification.

As we move into 2025, ULD CARE is confident that we can continue to be at the cutting edge when it comes to the application of technology to ULD management, delivering real value to our members.

Sustainability

The second string in the ULD CARE bow is sustainability. Here we need a big shout out to Louise Platell at VRR and the rest of the team for the tremendous progress made in the past 12 months on the sustainability label project. It would be a big mistake for ULD CARE not to be pursuing a sustainability initiative. There is a very long way to go but a long march begins with a single step and, in the past 12 months, that single step has finally been taken.

As Louise writes: “The progress we have achieved last year is incredible. At the start of the year, I couldn’t have imagined how we would all come together and draw up the content of this label. We truly acted like a team. Let’s do this again in 2025 such that we can launch the label.”

The annual conference provided an opportunity for collaborators on this project to sign a MOU.

Training

The third string in the ULD CARE bow is our continuing initiative to improve learning opportunities for the multitude of different personnel categories who will, in some form or other work, with ULD. We achieve this through our collaboration with Airport College, with who we have two initiatives in addition to their comprehensive online ULD training.

The first is our long-standing ULD 60 Seconds portfolio. This year we were able to add to new offerings both related to the operations around and in the aircraft: a preloading check and in-hold ULD operations. These were achieved with input from Jürgen Neumann, the hold liner specialist at Airbus.

The second is the ULD Challenge first put forward at the 2023 conference. The initial response was less than we hoped for but a subsequent relaunch at this year’s conference seems to be yielding results that are encouraging. Achieving a greater level of knowledge around ULD is going to be an ongoing challenge in this high-turnover low-wage industry. ULD CARE and Airport College will therefore continue to pursue this ambition.

From left to right: Pertti Mero (Airport College), Terry Waithe (Air Canada), Louise Platell (VRR), Celine Hourcade (SATS Ltd), Bob Rogers (ULD CARE).

2024 ULD CARE annual conference

Last but not least, we must, of course, speak about the 2024 ULD CARE annual conference. One of our ambitions has always been to achieve a greater outreach to those parts of the industry that work with ULD. In this regard, the 2024 event was an undeniable success. We were able to showcase the activities and successes of ULD CARE on multiple occasions to the much wider audience of the entire Aviation Connect event, parallelly to our own internal discussions. We were also successful in networking with a good number of delegates from the much wider audience.

2025 has all the makings of being a very interesting year for the ULD CARE community. Of course, we cannot forecast how things will go in the larger air cargo industry and the even larger aviation industry in the coming 12 months. However, we can continue to be optimistic about making progress with our various initiatives and, in this regard, we can definitely say that ULD CARE stands out as a trade organisation that walks its talk!

Best wishes for the holiday season and, of course, a healthy and prosperous 2025.