How can air freight help your wine importing take off?

As a wine importer, you want to offer wine from all over the world to your customers, so they can savor different terroirs, climates, and grape varieties. During transportation preserving the wine's quality is key for you, but you'll also need to consider the speed to get your wine and the price to choose your transport mode. Air freight could be the perfect solution for you in certain cases.

Why choose air freight over other modes of transport?

If you choose to move your wine with a freight forwarder such as Hillebrand Gori, you have a range of transport modes available including rail freight, road freight, and sea freight. Each of these modes can meet specific needs when it comes to importing your wine. But air freight is one of the quickest and most flexible of all the routes to market (RTM) at your disposal and 

Let’s look at how air freight can make up for many of the shortfalls left by other transport options and be a real game-changer for your business.

How does air freight compare to sea freight?

Until the early 20th Century, sea freight was the only way to deliver wine overseas and it has long dominated global trade. 

But while ships can reach virtually any of the 939 ports in the world, air freight is now the truly global mode of transport. Flying at around 900 km per hour, planes can reach thousands of destinations across the planet in under a day. This makes it perfect for urgent deliveries. 

On the other hand, sea freight is relatively slow and can be vulnerable to bad weather or even maritime bottlenecks. 

Sea journeys can also raise the risk of your wine being exposed to changes in temperature on the route leading to thermal shocks and high humidity.  The result might be degraded wine quality or even complete ruin. It is possible to mitigate these risks and preserve the quality of your wine by upgrading to a dry container combined with our insulation liner or to a fully refrigerated container. 

How does air freight compare to rail and road freight?

Rail freight is eco-friendly and reliable and makes sense for wine that needs delivery overland long distance. On the other hand, trains are not the best mode for urgent shipments and the rail networks don’t generally cross continents. 

Similarly, although road freight using trucks is the easiest and quickest way to move your wine short  distances, it isn’t a sensible option for medium or long-distance shipments when timing is critical. 

If you need intercontinental, transcontinental, or overseas wine shipments in a hurry, air freight is usually the most appropriate choice.

Air freight advantages

Here’s a breakdown of the main advantages of air freight:

• Global reach: The vast network of airports and airlines connects your wine importing business to almost every corner of the world.
• Huge carrying capacity: People often believe air freight can only handle smaller shipments, but this isn’t the case. For example, you can even charter an entire air freighter to carry up to 110 tons. 
• Protected: The stringent security that every air passenger experiences extends to cargo, making theft unlikely.
• Safe: In fact, it’s the safest mode of all forms of freight transport.  
• Reliable: Flights can be easily rerouted to avoid dangerous storms and still meet their schedules, but ships, trains, and trucks are forced to push through or delay their journey.
• Flexible: Air freight is so flexible that you should always be able to find a flight, even at short notice. In the event of first-mile delays, wine can be easily rebooked onto another flight.

These advantages mean you can quickly cater to ever-evolving consumer tastes. Keep your inventory lean and adjust your order volumes and frequencies according to consumer preferences, seasonal demands, or emerging trends.

What’s more, air freight allows you to open new markets to expand your wine range with limited quantities of high-quality premium wines. Air freight is also important to consider when releasing time-sensitive samples for wine events or exhibitions.

What are the 4 types of air freight?

Air freight can be classified into four categories:

1. Charter: A dedicated aircraft hired for direct transportation of wine.
2. On-Board Courier: Wine shipments sent as luggage on a passenger airline.
3. Commercial Airline: Wine carried in the cargo hold of a passenger airline.
4. Freighter: Wine carried on dedicated cargo flights operated by freight forwarders.

How much is air freight per kg?

The price of air freight can vary across carriers and in response to demand and depends on the quantity you are moving and where it is going to. For up-to-date quotes contact an expert freight forwarder like Hildebrand Gori.

How sustainable is air freight?

While air freight isn’t currently as ‘green’ as sea freight, as in other industries, a lot of work is now being done to improve the environmental credentials of air cargo.

For example, DHL, Hillebrand Gori’s parent company, offers a new optional GoGreen Plus service for air cargo. 

This service allows customers to reduce, or ‘inset’, carbon emissions associated with their air freight by using Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). SAF is produced from waste oils and can provide greenhouse gas emission reductions of up to 80 % over its life cycle compared with conventional jet fuel.

With GoGreen Plus you can tailor the amount of CO2e reduction you want to achieve and the amount of SAF used.

What’s more, the world’s airlines and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have come together to put in place a plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  

To do this they will have to mitigate 1.8 gigatons of carbon. They plan to reach this target by cutting:

• 65% through sustainable aviation fuels
• 22% via carbon capture, storage, and offsets
• 13% using new technology like hydrogen and electric power sources

Best practices

If you want to avoid any delays, you need to take extra care when it comes to paperwork such as commercial invoices, packing lists, or bills of lading. Double-check the customs regulations of your wine’s destination and comply with all the rules.

If you partner with a reliable freight forwarder like Hillebrand Gori, our experienced logistics professionals can help you deal with this kind of red tape.

Our many happy customers can testify to the advantages of working with us. 

For one client, we photographed, packaged, insulated, and insured 800 bottles of fine and rare wines worth €700,000 and then moved them 3,080km from Japan to Hong Kong. All of this in just five days, while preserving the quality and value of the wines all the way from origin to destination.

When another client needed to safely transport 160 tons of wine and spirits 5,758 km within eight days, who did they trust for the job?

Less than a week after receiving the brief we had moved all 160 tons of wines and spirits 850 km from Cognac, France, to an airport in Liège, Belgium. In just two days, four regular flights and a specially chartered Airbus then hauled all the cargo from Belgium to New York. Job done. 

Our expertise even stretches into outer space! We helped Space Cargo Unlimited coordinate a unique shipment of 12 bottles of 2000 Bordeaux Grand Cru from the International Space Station to Bordeaux for analysis at the Institut Superieur de la Science et du Vin.

Due to its reliability, speed, carrying capacity, safety, flexibility, and global reach, air freight is growing more popular with wine importers.  

Leveraging air freight strategically for wine that needs fast delivery or extra care means you can quickly foster a more responsive operation and see your customer satisfaction levels take off.

To explore the opportunities of air freight for your wine-importing business to talk to a reliable air freight provider like Hillebrand Gori. Contact us for advice or a quote today.