Domestic Air Cargo Industry in Australia - Bureau of Infrastructure ...

Occasional Paper 87the major operators in the industry. TNT had obtained a share in anair freight forwarder when it acquired the interest in AT1 butotherwise its expansion was achieved by the diversification of itsexisting forwarding divisions into air freight.In contrast, Mayne Nickless expanded its air freight activitiesbyacquisition. The Ward Corporation, which was the largest domestic airfreight forwarder, was acquired in 1979 and Security Express joinedthe group in 1980. Country Couriers was acquired in 1982. MayneNickless also bought a 50 per cent interest in IPEC in 1983 and in thesame year acquired Skyroad Express, a major forwarder established byformer employees of Wards.The removal of most direct Cornonwealth controls over domestic aircargo operations in 1982 was reportedly accompanied by substantial newentry in the air freight forwarding industry. However, many of thesecompanies subsequently left the industry as they were unable toachieve the economies of scale which provide significant costadvantages to larger operators.Traf f i cThe relaxation of Cornonwealth Government regulation was alsoaccompanied by significant changes in the amount of air cargo carriedon trunk routes.Fre igh tInformation on annual changes in the freight tonne-kilometresattributable to Ansett, TAA and IPEC over the 10 years to 1985-86 ispresented in Table 4.2. The first column contains the figurespublished by the Department of Aviation. The datain the secondcolumn incorporate an adjustment to offset the impact of traffictransferred from the charter sector to the airline sector in 1982.2There were both increases and falls in airline freight traffic inindividual years during the period of detailed regulation and thispattern continued after the regulatory changes. The growth ofpassenger traffic, which was subject to detailed regulation between1976-77 and 1985-86, was also both slower and faster than that of2. The adjustment for 1981-82 was made by subtracting IPEC's 1981-82airline traffic from the total airline traffic carried by Ansett,TAA and IPEC in that year. For later years, the annual equivalentof IPEC's airline traffic up to the comnencement of the TAAcontract was subtracted from total traffic in each year.34