newstodate.aero

Aug 04, 2020 (newstodate): The drop in market demand due to the coronavirus turmoil and the shortfall of cargo capacity on passenger aircraft takes a heavy toll on the providers of seafood handling at Oslo Airport.
   Gardermoen Perishables Center, managed by Torgil Staalberg, is no exception.
   -July is traditionally a low season in seafood exports, but this year is performing exceptionally badly, with volumes down some 30 percent and no signs of growth in the immediate future, says Mr Staalberg.
   -We are still handling the freighters of Korean, Emirates and Qatar, but the biggest challenge is the almost total absence of passenger aircraft offering cargo capacity.  
   -We were forced to lay-off staff in April and May, but later managed to call back most of them while managing the staff holiday schemes tightly. So today we are only 15 employees short of the normal 75 staff workforce.
   -So far, we have thus performed fairly well, and probably better than most of our competitors at Oslo Airport. But we will have to wait and see if traffic picks up again by September-October to ascertain which measures to take.
   -To be honest, I am on the pessimistic side; I am afraid that we will have to wait till 2021 to see things improving, all depending on a recovery of the airline passenger traffic, says Mr Staalberg.