Podcast: GSP builds case as alternative cargo gateway

0:00Hello and welcome to another episode of Cargo Facts Connect, the podcast of Cargo Facts, the publication of record for the air cargo and refrigerator aircraft industries for over 40 years. I'm senior associate editor Robert Luke and it's Friday, September 11. Cargo Facts recently visited Greenville, Spartanburg International Airport and spoke with Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Tom Tyra and Kelly Wiggs, General Manager Airlines Services at GSPs Holy Old Handling Division, Chirillian Aviation, to discuss the airport's role in strategy for supporting stakeholders in the air cargo industry. Take a listen. Well, what we've got is the operation at GSP started in 2016 and it started out as an operation

1:02that was helping another business partner in the community auto manufacturer that ran in some difficulties with logistics made it a whole lot easier to be closer to the plant. So we stood up a cargo operation and a very modest cargo operation. So it's just under 5,000 square feet in a cargo building that was used by our legacy carriers mainly for US Postal Mail, those types of things. But a lot of the operation was handled on the ramp. It was a 747, a few times a week, but kind of learning, you know, the cargo business, we learned it very quickly because just three years later we opened up 110,000 square foot cargo facility at the end of our runway, had a 17 acre ramp, it could park 3, 747s simultaneously. We had a partner that was Senator International as a freight forwarding partner and they

2:08since then have been acquired by Merisk. And still we're very close working partners with them but we work with all freight forwarders. You know, it's not just a Merisk operating at the airport so we work with everybody that ships any items can come through and work with GSP and work with Cyrillian aviation. Soon after by 2021 we were already well underway with a 50,000 square foot expansion to our facility. So we're up to 160,000 square feet and we doubled the size of our ramp. We're about 35 acres for a ramp. So now we can park 6, 747s simultaneously there. We are able and have we actually operate all the fueling on the airfield. We do passenger ground handling, we do charter services. We actually run the FBO as well. So we're able to kind of approach carriers that are they the large carriers with cargo

3:10or are they smaller units that sometimes in other airports coming out of the FBO. We're kind of the best of all worlds because we can handle any aircraft shipping any item basically coming through the airport. We have ability to temporarily stand up things like cool chain and those types of things as well. So if the customer needs that we have partnerships across all the freight forwarders in the region. And what we've found in particularly since the pandemic where we were up to 20 somewhat flights a week moving items in and out of the upstate South Carolina region is that we are a very attractive alternative to some of the larger traditional hubs that carriers operate out of. And sometimes we'll be a little more congested. There'll be a longer wait times to get dock doors for trucks. They will be a longer turn time on the aircraft and frankly not set up in a way that has the

4:13space to accommodate unique shipping. Things like concert movements or even live animals. We've shipped hundreds of cows to Africa for dairy operations. We've done Lamborghinis, we've done mastangs. We've done helicopter parts. We have the record actually in 2018 this area hosted the world of question in games and we actually shipped over 550 horses in and out of this airport for the games that were in North Carolina. The game is larger than what the Olympics does. The Olympics averages around 300 horses. So it is a significant movement where the team here came up with unique ways to solve the problems and they came in from all over the world. Europe, they came in from Middle East and we were able to transport them to a quarantine facility where the horse event was taking place.

5:15But efficiently moved them. It was a big lift but did it. We routinely see aircraft with tails from around the world. We've been as far as Vietnam. We've had Korea, we've had South Africa, had China flights on a fairly routine basis in and out of here. We've found now that because carriers are finding this is a convenient alternative to some of those traditional hubs. They're actually trucking items in from other places like over the weekend. We actually have some shipments coming in from the Chicago area. We've had them come in from Texas. We've had them come in from the Northeast where they pop them on a truck, can gather them all up in our space over a number of days and then we can load up a special operation and take it out or an operation comes in here, then loads up the trucks and then puts it on the highway and takes it to where it needs to go. You know moving forward, we have, we have a lot of space now but we can also in our master

6:19plan we can actually double our facilities so we can do another building that's around 160,000 square feet on that same 35 acre ramp that we have. Beyond that we can also build a duplicate facility of two buildings that are over 150,000 square feet and a ramp that's at 35 acres as well. So not saying that kind of growth can come tomorrow but we are well positioned for the future if if if air cargo continues to expand in this area and particularly across the southeast, we're well positioned to be able to take opportunities as they arise. Thank you Tom for sharing that. You've expanded on some very important parts and when I ask you a two part question in front of me. Of the regions you've seen coming whether it was Vietnam, South Africa as you mentioned earlier which ones have actually started have you seen the most volume coming from as of this year as you start to see more people become attracted to GSP in in addition to that

7:23with the expansion to the 100,000 tons you just recently spoke of. Are you now are you seeing because of the man that you're now obsolete with that additional space and need to expand more or is it kind of still a wait and see approach? Well first of all where we're seeing the growth we are heavily influenced by moving product in and out of Europe. That is we have some very large partners nearby auto manufacturers and others that have operations in Europe so they will send parts and vehicles and you know all kinds of other components into Europe. Particularly right now Leage is kind of our biggest airport partner. We also have Han and just outside of Frankfurt. Very big partner with us and then it goes beyond there. But we will see frankly we've up until probably six, eight months ago we had scheduled service into China, into Korea, into some others now.

8:23Some of the contracts that with that freight forward are changed and they're kind of moving in different paths right now. But we have really seen business from pretty much around the globe because of you know it's not a something that is a scheduled every single week but we will almost weekly we'll get calls about hey I need a special shipment or a special flight and it's all kinds of different products. I mean we'd love to be at a part to partner with some providers that would have stable scheduled service for whatever the product is. But right now it's a lot of ad hoc or charter type of operations beyond our regular flights that go in and out of Europe. We are in discussions with other airports, partner airports in Canada and in South America. We see there's great opportunity there. They also see it where right now that product is going through the more traditional hubs

9:27going through Miami, it's going through Atlanta, it's going through New York, going through Chicago. But as we are a secondary airport or an alternative airports, we're working with other alternative airports. And so can we give the value to those shippers to say look as you have you're the only customer on the ground at that time you have tons of space to work your operation and we can do things a little more custom than you could at a larger airport that has much a lot more regulations. If it's going by belly freight on American or Delta or United, you have certain parameters that you can handle. If you're doing an all freight operation and it's a unique build, you have a full focus of our team working on every single operation rather than hey that's just another flight in here today and we're going to move this thing when we get to it.

10:28It's a 100% focus on every operation and secondary airports and that's why I think moving forward a lot of companies will start looking at secondary airports as not just a place to go when emergencies happen and I got to get this out of here. But I should be there all the time because why am I dealing with the hassles of a large traditional hub if I can get 100% customer service all the time? I was going to ask about Honda next I think since we've been talking about partnerships so much. So we were curious about how freighter growth has developed between here and Honda since you'll sign that partnership was it two or three years ago now? Yeah, it's probably a couple of years ago that we did it and now that it was it two years yeah, because we did it at Air Cargo Europe. Now the interesting thing with Honda is Honda we go way, way back with those guys. So it's at least ten years probably before that you know when we first start up the cargo operations. Senator International was our partner at the time now it's Merisk.

11:31They were flying most of all their stuff into Honda and so we had relations we talked to them. We just didn't get around to coordinating efforts you know and over time they had a kind of innovative business development crew since that time when we first started up we built business development crew as well here and so we said you know why you know we're both secondary airports we're both underserved we both offer the convenience and excess and all that type of stuff. Why aren't we why aren't we approaching people together and and sharing contacts and information and and so we signed a sister airport partnership and we we went on a tour we visited their facility met all of their folks and now they they don't have a wholly owned operation like a cerillian but they but they are working very closely with with their freight forwarders on on the property.

12:32They're doing the ramps. Yeah and the ramp and and they've got lots of space just like we do so we had a great relationship with them while we were in Germany then within month or two they came here showed them around and talked to some business partners and others and they they love the place and so we finalized the agreement and since then we've had things like I think the Mustangs went in there I think there was so we have the equipment we we don't have scheduled service. It's reciprocal at the moment we did for a number of years and that was a I'll say great relationship. We had a lot of access to them when we went over there we kind of strengthened that and this partnership strengthened that and we had we didn't have an emergency for a customer this winter that really showed how that could smooth the process from side to side and

13:34it was the cost of communication it was the constant emails it was them telling us hey this bird's not going to go out on time it's going to be an hour late to you because one of our deice trucks you know has a problem or whatever whatever it is or a truck is late but that communication really helped the final customer because we were able to give real time updates rather than saying well when the flight goes in the air then you know how long it takes to get here it wasn't that we had great communication it was hey guys could you build this this way it makes it easier for us to you know fork it off and gets it on the trucks faster so that open communication that we have with VG cargo and Honda Airport it is really a spent processes for charter operations but especially for that emergency time for that customer. And so a conference isn't things where we're together we say hey we just ran into this prospect they really need to talk to you or hey this you will get a call we you know our

14:36business development team has a most a monthly call with them just to talk about what's going on in each market. Hey we have this provider doing such and such and they're going into this other airport hey but they they actually once they go to that other airport they're trucking next to our airport so can we jointly approach these guys and try to move these operations here and there and like I said it's always a changing the mindset it's a constant effort to try to get people to continually they'll use us and then you got to remind them you know when it comes up again but that's and we're looking for more partnerships like that. You know what that is what are the airports are being constructed. Yeah so we're we're chatting with some folks up in Canada okay and we're you know they're working through some depends on the country and who's the ownership of the airport you know how how quickly some of these things go through and how much pageantry that has to be involved and sign off some things but there's

15:39there's an airport up in in Canada there's one in South America we'd like to chat about there's a couple of them in the United States that we wouldn't mind doing a little bit more work with secondary airports that you know they will not so much we can do some between us but is there kind of the triangle you know something comes in there then goes back to somewhere in Asia or Europe and then comes into our place and so you don't have enough for this region and don't have enough for this region to do something all the time but do you have enough to do it half or maybe there's three airports in there and you go two times two times two times now all of a sudden you have a six day a week operation to connect and you know to places in overseas and so it's a little more complicated to get all that together but we we're hoping here that later this year this calendar year we're hoping to announce another one and then there may be one a year after

16:42that what would be the vision of GSPS4 is attracting more wide body operators to the airport and how could what is what is some of the approaches you're taking to get that attraction turned into a consistent regular operation yeah so we we have the facilities a lot of smaller secondary airports don't have the facilities we have we have an 11,000 and one foot runway we're index C fire we have US customs on site we have brand new facility here you're working directly with the airport in handling your flights it's not hey you're working with a tenant of the airport and you know if you're not getting the service that you need you know you have to work it out with them you're working with us and every single flight is important for us and you get a decision on things that you have and turn around almost immediately all of our equipment is amongst the

17:44newest that you're going to find at airports and we are heavily equipped with all of the items from deicing to tugs and and tractors and and forklifts and everything that you would need we're not going to have to go out and rent a bunch of equipment to handle so special operations we have those things and so it's a total turnkey type of operation they come in and simply call our team and say hey I I need to move this product can you guys do that and and generally it's a absolutely yes we can do that and when do you want to move it that's a that's a pretty enticing sale the challenge we've had over time is that a lot of the companies even though they get frustrated with large hub operations and traditional hub operations they are traditional they are what is known you know the pain that you're going to get and you you're familiar with it going to something brand new it takes a few times of them using us to go okay maybe they were really on their best behavior

18:49that first flight and it really worked but then the second time you know that was just like it just as good as the first one and you know what that's just as good as the next one and we get them to where hey you know what now's now's the time that we really just need to start redirecting our product so we'll have a handful of folks with each of these operators go we love GSP and we love Cerillian they really take care of us it's then getting everyone else in the company and all the chains to go against the traditional where I know you know that that's where you're going to have to ship things through and you're not there's always an alternative to going through there and you know when you have freight forwarders and schedulers and others sometimes they have lots of stuff coming in and the easy go to is okay and these go to US it's JFK it's Atlanta it's it's Miami it's Chicago that's the easy one that we know we don't know what a GSP is or we don't know some of these other secondary airports in the US like Rockford or Rick and back or some of

19:50those places like that but we all offer very enticing once you get the boots on the ground here they'll go I don't know why we're going to look from those other places it's just convincing everybody else within their chain it's building awareness it's it's the concert perfect example as we've got that going on this weekend we've had people that well I don't know you know having ever heard of this airport or you know we don't have any experience here once we got these guys with the experience the carriers the the brokers and all the freight forwarders even the concert built staff themselves there's when we've shown them what we could do in the space that we had and how organized it was how clean the facilities were how we could dedicate space to a real design build process they won't go anywhere else I mean that's that's exactly why this weekend's concert it's it's not happening anywhere close it's being trucked across the country to come specifically

20:53to go out of GSP a lot of people say why why would you do that when they come and see our warehouse and see how our team works then they understand why and just to kind of speak to that Kelly how important is it that you guys can now also in addition to giving that dedicated one-on-one service that would definitely benefit the brokers and the carriers to being able to offer them expansion opportunities in an airport that has so much acreage and land available we that's one of our greatest assets we've got room to go for growth you know our I'll say our model is customized we can customize for your customer we can customize for the freight forward we can do things that you might not do at a at a traditional hub like Atlanta or Chicago JFK because they don't they've got so much they don't have time nor the willingness to do that we we've got that willingness we've got the space and and we can really customize things for our customers and I believe the same goes for land

21:58parcels for construction of facilities ramp features the airports open to to expansion to customize facilities for people could you give us an example of that customization yeah um I I would say this this weekend's a perfect example um you show me a hub that has a hundred thousand square foot warehouse that can do a four seven forty seven build in one weekend basically one and a half days is what we're going to do the build on by laying everything out for screening design and build that's you know that's what we can do we've had smaller shipments of like the flowers couple hours farma things that they might only be a two week or a two month period but we can bring in refor trucks we can bring in you know extra personnel we can design a process we had a

22:59customer that's in the upstate of South Carolina that brought a shipment in through JFK and they had 60 percent destruction of the equipment that they could not use one of our freight forwarders that we have a good partnership with called us and said hey you know could you guys do this can you do this um we brought it in we talked to the customer we went to the customer facility to talk to them of why is this important why can't you touch product here you know how do you how do you move it on your yard when you're building this we came up with a better process we you know we wrapped our heads around it I've got intelligent industry leaders as as my team here we came up with a customized solution that it reduced the damage to zero interesting as we speak on just customization as you look at the market this year and of course there's a lot of great challenges the market is undertaking right now but it still grows and it continues to thrive what are some areas that

24:05you're seeing opportunity for GSP and as you look at the market today and how is that translated into how much throughput the airport has seen thus far this year yeah so there's there's always going to be we think a stable flow of automotive moving through this area you know not just with large partners like BMW but we have Volvo Mercedes and all kinds of other automotive in the in the southeast and we have other transportation units there's Oshkosh defense which is building all the U.S. Postal Service Vehicles and things so there's a lot of auto manufacturing with that is may not be moving male trucks but we may be moving parts for male trucks or parts for their assembly line or you know something else that they need because you can't have that line down and say oh I'm we're just not going to work today you need to have that you can't have downtime at the factory so that's when air really comes more valuable but but we do see that there is a growing on-shoring

25:12of things like pharmaceuticals other things that the U.S. really isn't set up in a way to really take a lot of that immediately and I think they're going to need to start looking at places that have land have opportunity are well connected geographically and can we distribute that that they'll start looking at places like us as more of that on-shoring happens if it continues it certainly seems like that's happening but it's it's years to build factories and to look at moving customers but there's only so many places you're not going to go to some of these traditional places and you're going to have to tear something down to build something new here you've got green green space and then you can build it as you need it and build it at the you know at a level that demand will warrant and then you can expand it as demand continues to grow you can't do that very many other places we see the same thing with really the logistics of avoiding some of these very large traditional

26:14from South America on up pulling up to Canada in fact we've been having some discussions for few years now between working with partners in Canada and working with partners in South America and Ken GSP via middle bridge moving things like seafood moving flowers moving other items between those places where we have demand from GSP to Canada GSP to South America but then South America to Canada and vice versa and is there a way that we can move that and do it where we can get a carrier willing to put an airplane in that will sell to anyone any freight forwarder not just a specific chartered out of flight but I'll sell space within there so you may have 10 different freight forwarders that have a little bit of product not enough to justify a full flight but if you have a little bit and you have a little bit and you have a little bit then we've got us a stable service and I think we're getting close to that some of it is this changing mindset

27:17it's a little bit because the freight forwarders aren't always used to working together they're working against each other to try to steal each other's customers and try to outbid each other and all that stuff some of this is getting over that of will the partner you're working at look at your waybills and try to steal your customer or not you know is there is there enough where we know that you're going to make all your customers happy because you're going to take even their small amount and put it in something that's expedited rather than telling them yes I've got a truck into another place I kind of put it on belly freight it's going to sit in a warehouse for three days and then it's going to finally get to where it is or you know what GSP has a flight that goes out every two days and you can have it you know you know the scheduled time just have it here by whatever time at the dock door and the sirelian folks to take care of it and it's going to go that's where it says a constant effort of changing mindsets how the industry has been thinking how

28:19people in the industry go to the quick solution maybe go to that next solution and the ones who do will really see the benefit because though the guys who don't will wonder like how how this small guy get you know such a foot hold into whatever the industry is well because he's faster to market he's he's got less damage he's got more predictability and frankly he can call up and say you know that operation I need this something special on that and then we can make that happen where you go into that and you go to an LA or a Chicago or something I need something special and they went now wait that's what we this is what we do no this is we're going to move it we're going to move it in volume but this is what we do we don't have to have a small freight forward or you get that collective bargaining power as as a group correct that can take that to the airline and see real savings and then coupled with us you're going to see the additional the speed to market yeah so would it be

29:21the goal of GSP to stay within this niche of being customizable direct point to point service with the customers whether it's the broker or the operator or are you looking to get to a point where you have the growth in size of Atlanta or Chicago and just expand why or why not that is your official recall yeah well I think I think while we have the opportunity we're not going to become in Atlanta or or a Chicago it's just a lot of that is built on the belly freight of the passenger aircraft that are going to go all over the world the demand here for passenger aircraft that will continue to grow our region is growing by leaps and bounds and populations so that will grow but it's never going to hit in Atlanta even a Charlotte or you know Philadelphia any of that any of that size so yeah so so that's that we're not we're going to get that size I think something where we can scale up and keep the same level of high service that we have and basically

30:25we can double or more what we do today and still keep that same level and I think having an ability to build on that the one of the challenges for us will be is if we continue to grow and we lose that ability to customize we lose that ability to personalize how the service is done I think we then just become just like any traditional hub right you want to keep that separate so there is some of that we're never going to get that big and that's okay but we can get a lot bigger but we want to do it in a way that we don't lose track of what's got us here so what we'll do next is just poppy ask maybe one or two questions outside on the ramp so we saw that in 2025 GSB had 11% cargo through with growth are you expecting to see that sustained going through 2026 so in the future as well but I think what we're going to see is a

31:25a little leveling off of some of that activity mainly for world events but I think for the rest of 26 but I think on 27 looks much more robust so we have a really good feeling of 27 we're going to be back on the growth path again I don't think we're going to be down this year I think we're going to be stable I think 27 and 28 look very very good for GSB and Srelian yeah I would just add you know this year compared to 2025 we've seen a lot of growth in the charter activity that we've had wide body and the hot shot charter that supports automotive in the region so I would say steady growth maybe not as quite as high as that 11% so speaking on growth and operations what is the normal turnaround time for us 747 freighted at you guys normally handle on a dead basis so typically for our scheduled service we have a four hour turnaround which is a little longer usually

32:29at three hour three and a half hours it's probably an industry standard the reason we have the four hour is so that it gives the customer the opportunity to ship a lot of last minute freight some just in time deliveries to get out that gives them a broader picture of what they're able to get over to us it's customized for that customer okay and Kelly just speaking on some of the specialty freight can you break down some of the specialty freight operations that you handle I know you mentioned a concert initially but what are some other charters or air freight operations you handle the GSB yeah so we've had we've had in the concert equipment we've done very well with that but we've also done race teams we've had the Lamborghini Truffet oh championship race teams from America to fly over to Italy we had several Mustang chargers and various race groups from that

33:34we have seen a lot of large industrial machinery such as bulldozers and and military items going out also live animals such as cow horses also a lot of large oversized pieces it requires dual loader nose nose load operations so pretty much if it's specialty or an oddity or something that doesn't fit in the normal box it usually comes through here okay and as you look at your operational platform and capabilities you can currently handle six seven forty sevens right now on the ramp are you when do you expect to expand out to the additional two to get up to eight as initially mentioned in your plans for expansion here at GSB it would probably be at a point where we see more customer growth right now we're we're really comfortable with the ramp size that we've had there have been times that it's been very full and there's been times like today where you don't

34:39have a lot of activity in the space so we're working well with the six hard stands that we do have I wouldn't say immediate but it could be customer driven and base customer driven okay and just to wrap things up I want to ask this to both you and Tom to those customers or listeners or potential customers rather and does your stakeholders that may hear this why would GSB be a good fit for their operational needs or strategy going forward as you continue to expand the bill presents for the airport yeah well I think they'll find the GSB is geographically located in the right spot or right in the middle of the southeast US which is the growing area we have access to highway we're within a mile and a half of interstate 85 26 95 and you know we have an ability to customize every single shipment that we have coming through here it is nothing is ever the same and any shipment we can change a glass moment we can adapt and I think the customer's coming in here

35:46no question or no request is anything that we haven't already heard and can handle that was Tom Tyra vice president and chief marketing and communications officer at GSP and Kelly Wiggs general manager of airline services as a really an aviation speaking with cargo facts during our recent site visit and that's all the time we have today for more coverage of the freighter aircraft market visit cargofacts.com thank you very much for tuning in and join us again next time