Swissport Japan and local partner the Marubeni Corporation have successfully established their collaboration, and will now be intensely developing their joint business activities.
Zurich – In the meantime, Swissport Japan has won its first major customer at Nagoya Airport. Shigeru Ohashi has been appointed as company President & CEO and Philip Bowell has assumed commercial and operational responsibility as Chief Operating Officer.
Following the acquisition of aviation maintenance provider SGS in autumn 2006 and the recent shareholding involvement of Marubeni, which now formally owns 49% of the company, Swissport Japan has been busily preparing to launch its full range of ground handling products and services. From this June onwards, Swissport will be in a position to offer the full range of major aviation services, concentrating initially on Nagoya and Osaka and later extending its operations to Fukuoka and Tokyo, Narita.
Swissport’s partner Marubeni is one of Japan’s best-known industrial concerns. So the collaboration offers an ideal combination of Swissport’s global aviation experience and local market expertise.
Many airlines have been waiting for some time for an opening-up of the Japanese ground handling market, and welcome the wider choice and greater flexibility that Swissport Japan’s arrival should provide. Swissport Japan already offers a range of services to various customers, but is delighted to have secured one of the biggest US carriers to contract its ground handling services in Nagoya from June onwards.
“The Japanese ground handling sector is highly attractive and offers a vast amount of potential,” says Urs Sieber, Swissport Executive Vice President for the region. “I am looking forward to a phase of what should be strong and dynamic growth; and I’m convinced that our partnership with Marubeni will strengthen our capabilities. We’re laying the groundwork already: we’ve prepared over 200 personnel over the last few weeks for their new duties of delivering our top-quality services. And we’ve invested several million dollars in new equipment to give our customer airlines the best possible ground handling product.”
