JEDDAH: Saudi Airlines Cargo Company Ltd plans to increase its investment in domestic stations to SR67.6 million, company's Chairman Engineer Khaled Al-Molhem said. "The move will add strategy depth to the company's global operations," he said, explaining that 31 percent of the development funds will go to Jeddah, 49 percent to Riyadh and 20 percent to other domestic stations for expenditure on new ground support equipment, facilities and service agreements. "Jeddah and Riyadh are key global stations for cargo export, transit and export," the chairman pointed out, noting that "building on Jeddah's latest success of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) conducted by Quali-Audit requires continuous hard work," he said in a statement Sunday. Saudi Airlines Cargo, founded in 2008 as part of the privatization process of Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAA), achieved fleet and global network expansion last year and is effectively contributing to national economic growth by developing Saudi Arabia as a global cargo transport hub. "The focus this year is on elevating operational performance at all stations so as to keep pace with global airfreight industry growth," Al-Molhem noted. Fahad Hammad, chief executive officer, said the investment strategy is aimed at developing Jeddah as the main gateway for cargo flights to and from the African countries, and Riyadh as the main gateway for air cargo to and from the Far East and Europe. "The building of domestic ground infrastructure stems from the Board of Directors' decision to increase fleet strength by 40 percent to 11 aircraft from May so as to penetrate new global markets with sophisticated services, he added. Saudi Airlines Cargo operates 9 freighters and sells the belly-capacity on 125 passenger aircraft from Saudi Arabian Airlines spanning a rapidly expanding global network of 85 destinations.
