Combining new-generation cargo community systems with Ai is delivering cargo handling productivity improvements of 20-40% or even higher. And multimodal synergies could deliver significant new opportunities, Kale Logistics Solutions’ CEO Amar More tells Will Waters
The combination of new-generation cargo community systems (CCS) with some initial use cases of Ai is delivering productivity improvements of 20-40% or more, with one airport achieving a doubling of its cargo handling productivity. These are among the highlights of a conversation with Amar More, CEO of cargo technology specialist Kale Logistics Solutions – which has emerged as a leading provider of digital community systems to the international air cargo sector.
With demand from cross-border e-commerce surging, and customer expectations for fast, trackable delivery ramping up, pressure continues to build for the air cargo sector to share and deliver better and faster data – with one another, and with customers. And while some continue to debate the slow pace of rolling out international data-sharing standards, such as IATA’s ONE Record, leading tech firms, cargo handlers, airports, and airport cargo communities are pushing ahead with increasingly sophisticated CCS platforms. These go well beyond the basic messaging functions, to and from customs and other regulatory authorities, served by previous generations of CCS.
These new generations of CCS offer a shared platform for stakeholders including airlines, forwarders, customs authorities, handlers, and trucking companies to securely share all manner of data, including in ‘real time’, and coordinate workflows. The benefits are multiple and growing, including improving the efficiency and speed of cargo movements, reducing paperwork, bottlenecks, delays and costs, and delivering better visibility across the whole supply chain.
And by automating scheduling, and leveraging Ai for forecasting and workflow optimisation, leading CCS providers are helping stakeholders to improve productivity and optimise their resources, allowing them to manage increasing and volatile cargo volumes more efficiently. That, effectively, means virtually expanding their capacity and resources in an often capacity-restricted and resource-restricted environment.
Geographical and multimodal expansion
Following a successful US$30-million Series B investment round last year, Kale has expanded its operational footprint significantly over the past year. That includes a geographical expansion, internationally, and also expanding its services beyond air cargo to maritime and land logistics hubs. The company’s solutions are now deployed in 152 airports, including 110 airports using its cargo warehouse management systems and 42 deploying its flagship ‘Cargo Community Platform’ CCS.
“It’s a huge number,” says More. “It has been quite exciting. We now have our own team across 14 countries, [and] customers across 46 countries.”
Greater attention on the maritime business in the past year has led to Kale’s port community system also being deployed in 60 ports, further diversifying its customer base and international reach.
And their potential in intermodal, overland freight hubs is also being further explored. “Whether it’s an airport, maritime port, or land port, the concept is the same,” More explains. “The trucks arrive there at the same time, there is still paperwork happening, so a queue of trucks builds. It’s the same problems to be solved.”
Although known for its air cargo solutions, Kale has in fact been involved in intermodal initiatives for more than a decade, including in 2019 winning a United Nations award for public-private partnership in trade facilitation for its partnership in southern India with Tuticorin CFS Association, to digitalise and enable the seamless movement of containers from a notoriously congested container freight station to Tuticorin port.
AI use cases
A particular focal point for Kale Logistics in the last year or so has been the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence into its product suite, and the company this year appointed a chief Ai officer to oversee these developments, both for internal and external solutions. More says Kale’s chief product and Ai officer Rajan Subramanian brings “tremendous experience in product development” via two decades of experience driving technology strategy and creating products, via senior roles at Fortune 500 companies including Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, and PayPal.
Several Ai-driven modules are already operational in Kale’s solutions portfolio. For example, within its customer service tool, Kale’s generative Ai-based chatbots have taken a central role, especially in markets with high call-centre volumes. These bots, available in multiple languages, are linked directly to back-end operational databases, allowing them to address routine enquiries regarding shipment status, document readiness, arrival confirmation, and payment verification. This capability has only been in operation for seven to eight months, and it has resulted in a 20% reduction in the number of phone calls with routine enquiries, More says.
Another notable use case is the combination of optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning for the digitisation and validation of air waybills. Freight forwarders that do not yet support structured electronic data exchange can submit PDF documents, which are processed via OCR and evaluated by machine learning models. These models can identify missing or incorrect fields according to regional customs requirements – such as the need for a consignee tax number in shipments to Turkey.
The system flags such discrepancies for manual review prior to shipment, allowing corrections before physical cargo movement begins. According to operational feedback, this significantly reduces errors, expedites handling, and lowers the risk of delays or costly compliance interventions at arrival.
Intelligent scheduling of trucks
“The other AI use case we are doing is intelligent scheduling of trucks,” says More. Kale’s intelligent algorithms monitor historical booking patterns and real-time operational data to more effectively allocate appointment slots, with the aim of smoothing peak arrivals and reducing congestion. The system can recognise, for example, a recurring truck run, gauge typical loading and unloading times, and factor these into queue management.
Such features are designed to maximise the throughput of existing facilities, helping clients avoid unnecessary investments in additional space or staff. More estimates that Kale’s operational system has resulted in a 30% improvement in truck turnaround times.
Similar principles and aims apply to CCS in general, and implementing an airport-wide CCS approach brings significant improvements to the efficiency of a cargo community.
More says cargo handling efficiency, measured in tonnes per square metre per annum, averages about 8 to 10 tonnes per square metre per annum. He says a lot of airports in the world are “still at about the 5 to 8 range’, but the airports where Kales has implemented a CCS are much higher. “One airport, which was already at about 10 or 11 tonnes per square metre per annum, moved to 22 tonnes per square metre per annum,” he said.
Less waiting time
“It’s not rocket science.” Better truck scheduling means less cargo waiting time, which means that you can move more cargo.
These advances rely on the necessary digital paperwork to be filled out in advance, and uploaded to the cloud, so that the CCS is fully up to date. But if that is done correctly, airports could increase cargo processing speeds by up to 40%, More says.
These initial Ai-led improvements potentially only scratch the surface, with Kale exploring additional Ai use cases. These include finance and budgeting automation functions intended to optimise resource allocation, although these are only in proof-of-concept phase. Further machine learning modules being explored include predictive analytics for preventive maintenance or staff rostering, as part of ongoing investment in tools targeted at further improvements in operational efficiency.
Community systems implementation
But even prior to the introduction of Ai-led improvements, CCS initiatives were already generating significant efficiency increases for their participants.
Airports often drive these CCS initiatives themselves, pushing to implement the technology across their cargo community’s processes. But for some – for example, government-owned airports – that can be a complicated and long-winded process. For example, for one unnamed airport that was struggling with truck congestion, to get a CCS in place required it to go through formal
processes including an expression of interest, and requests for proposals, taking up to a year and a half. It was much simpler for Kale to go direct to the airport’s largest cargo handler and sign them up instead. While not addressing the whole problem, Kale implemented its system in over half of the airport’s cargo operations, resolving a large proportion of the truck congestion.
Kale’s CCS business is currently 60% airport-driven, with the other 40% arranged via individual stakeholders such as cargo handlers, or freight forwarding or other associations.
For example, Kale collaborates with the Air Cargo Agents Association of India and the Thailand International Freight Forwarders Association (TIFA), working alongside ground handling agents such as Bangkok Freight Services, WFS, ARM, and Thai Airlines. Using Kale’s platform, freight forwarders can send shipment data in advance, streamlining airport processing and reducing delays. Building on this success, Kale and TIFA are now also digitalising delivery orders in maritime shipping with major carriers like Maersk and MSC, replacing cumbersome paper processes with streamlined electronic workflows.
Maritime and sea-air potential
The potential of expanding in maritime operations is significant: while roughly 200 airports handling more than 50,000 tonnes of cargo annually can benefit from the efficiency gains of a CCS, there are some 5,500 ports worldwide moving more than 200,000 tonnes of cargo a year.
Kale hosts an annual ‘Clear View’ thought leadership summit for air cargo, gathering 25-30 top international industry leaders. “This year, we got the air cargo industry people in one room for one full day. We got the maritime people in another room for one full day, and the next day we got all of them together in the same room,” says More. “It was magic.”
One big takeaway was that there remain opportunities for expanding sea-air corridors, something predominately controlled by freight forwarders at the moment. More thinks “there is so much to be gained” if airports and ports could work together to develop and streamline these pathways. For such gains to be realised, there is a need for deeper integration, the elimination of redundant customs or security processes, and the establishment of data-sharing standards between ports and airports.
Kale wants to establish digital corridors for data to flow seamlessly between them. Most of the information, such as the name of the shipper, address of the shipper, name of consignee, etc., are the same whether for air or sea, More notes.
“There were a couple of airports and ports in the room who said they would like to explore it further.”
More argues that if such processes and corridors are expedited, the industry would become more resilient, with less-volatile pricing.
Marketplaces, corridors, and acquisitions
Looking forward, Kale is pursuing several other ambitious initiatives that build on the potential opportunities created by digitally connected cargo communities of potentially hundreds or thousands of cargo businesses and the masses of transactions shared between them.
One of these is the creation of logistics marketplaces within these cargo communities. And by leveraging the dense networks of agents, airlines, and ground handlers already using their systems, the company aims to enable more efficient allocation of available capacity – such as selling unused aircraft cargo space or matching empty trucks with backhaul opportunities.
Reiterating “Kale’s vision”, More says: “We are trying to solve three problems in the industry: congestion, paperwork, and transparency. “The way we are doing it is by creating communities around airports and ports. For example, in Mumbai, we have got 2,000 cargo agents, 100 airlines, two cargo handling companies, all transacting onto the common platform. “The next thing is to provide more value-added services to them. After that, we want to create logistics marketplaces out of this community.
“What does this mean? Because you already have so many people transacting onto the platform, if a British Airways flight from Mumbai to London has cargo space to sell, they have this platform available where 2,000 agents are connected. Or a truck coming to Mumbai airport with cargo doesn’t have anything to go back, he can declare himself available onto this platform. And customs brokers could use that.” He continues: “One airport has said they want to do this. And we are in the process of implementing that. We are in the build phase.”
Connecting multiple communities
And then the last phase is the creation of “digital corridors. So, connecting the communities together,” More says. “We’re doing a very interesting project with a European Union government and their customs, with a vision ‘that no life should be lost because of unavailability of critical medicine’. They want to expedite the clearance of pharmaceutical goods and vaccines. So, we are already creating a corridor between two airports or countries, so customs has all the information they need from the origin available in advance, and they don’t need to waste time clearing it.”
Kale is also actively increasing its presence in North America, recently adding its first port clients in the US and Canada to its growing list of airport clients. “That’s going to be a big growth area for us,” notes More.
“And in Ai, delivering more Ai use cases, and scaling up those use cases. Those are some areas of focus for next year.”
Kale’s market expansion looks set to include the acquisition of two businesses in the e-commerce space and the regulatory space – regulatory expertise “focused around different customs regimes; because that’s core to our community systems”, More notes. These acquisitions are intended both to deepen Kale’s capabilities and to add new value-added services for its established client communities, More says.
One of the acquisitions is in Europe, “so it gives us a European team”. More says one of these “will definitely go through”, while the other is still in its early stage.
New incentives
Data-sharing platforms and new-generation CCS platforms had already been generating significant efficiency improvements for airports and cargo handlers, and other stakeholders within airport cargo communities, even before new Ai-lead tools began providing further benefits. Truck-scheduling initiatives have brought particularly immediate benefits for cargo communities and their users, driving forward greater interest and participation in CCS platforms and other data-sharing initiatives offered by operators such as Kale, Nallian, and others.
But the addition of Ai-led tools offers to take things to an even higher level, providing further incentives for air cargo stakeholders to participate. These initiatives not only drive forward cost-saving efficiency benefits for their users, they also help drive digitalisation initiatives more broadly, generating further and often unforseen benefits across the whole logistics ecosystem. And the continuing growth and importance of e-commerce traffic, and the ever-growing regulatory demands from verticals such as pharma and life sciences, will only add to the pressures – and incentives – to participate.
The potential to create new connections and synergies with ocean freight and other modes of transport brings a further area of promise and new possibilities for efficiencies, and more flexible and resilient supply chains. And it could generate significant new sea-air and air freight business opportunities.
