Ecommerce boom fails to fix Latin America air cargo imbalance

Ecommerce imports are rewriting Latin America's air cargo networks, but the region's directional imbalance persists: LATAM Cargo says declining industrial shipments are offsetting much of the southbound online-retail growth, leaving carriers still searching for northbound freight to fill the return legs.

LATAM Cargo group CEO Andrés Bianchi, speaking to The Loadstar at TIACA's Air Cargo Forum in Miami last week, said stronger online retail volumes did not tell the whole story of southbound demand.

"First of all, it's important to note that ecommerce volumes have increased, but other commodities have decreased," he said. "That means still you face the imbalance, because the export sector is doing quite well."

Auto parts and mining equipment were among the industrial goods losing ground. A broader cargo mix offers diversification, but Bianchi warned that leaning harder on ecommerce introduces a different risk profile.

"They are much more exposed to regulatory cycles than other commodities. So you have to start thinking differently in terms of the risks you have to manage when you design your operation," he said.

Where is the ecommerce actually flying?

For Avianca Cargo, ecommerce has become the dominant driver of southbound business, above all on the Miami–Colombia corridor.

"We also move mining cargo, auto parts, and pharmaceuticals, but the biggest share and the biggest growth is ecommerce, for sure," CEO Diogo Elias told The Loadstar.

Avianca also carries online retail into Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Central America, and its resumed freighter operations from Miami to Venezuela carry ecommerce shipments as well.

The network math is asymmetric. Around 90% of Avianca's South American cargo into Miami originates from just five points, Elias explained. Out of Miami, the carrier serves more than 30 destinations, distributing ecommerce alongside automotive parts, semiconductors, mobile phones and other tech products.

Not all of the region's Chinese ecommerce transits the US. Avianca also routes shipments through Madrid, using its passenger network to connect Europe with South America.

"Our main hub in Europe is Madrid," Elias said, calling it the airline's principal European gateway for Chinese ecommerce.

What did the US de minimis change do to freighter capacity?

The loss of US de minimis treatment for Chinese shipments last year pushed platforms to redirect volumes elsewhere — and freighter deployment followed within weeks.

"They ramped up existing markets, or seemingly created new markets, overnight," said Martin Drew, an executive at Atlas Air.

"A good example was Lima in Peru. One of the biggest platforms said they now needed capacity into Lima. Today, we're still operating three flights a week from China into Lima, and that was a market they just switched over."

The redeployment then bit back. When US demand recovered, the aircraft committed to Latin America were no longer available for the additional American business.

"We had redirected so much capacity to Latin America that when we were asked for more capacity back into the US, there wasn't sufficient capacity," Drew said.

The shifting routes reinforce Miami's position as a connecting hub. In his conference presentation, Rotate's Ryan Keyrouse pointed to transhipments and indirect capacity serving Asia–Latin America demand, while cautioning that an apparently balanced global supply-demand picture would not necessarily hold on individual tradelanes.

How are exporters absorbing cost pressure?

Strong export flows mask a squeeze on shippers' own economics. On a separate panel, Bianchi said currency appreciation plus minimum wage increases had raised Colombian exporters' labour costs by 40% to 45% in dollar terms over the past year.

"When you try to talk to them about higher prices when they are already facing a cost crunch, your approach has to be different, and you have to be a lot more creative," he said.

For regional carriers, the task is to chase new demand without assuming the current cargo mix lasts. Bianchi flagged pharmaceuticals as a growth commodity alongside ecommerce, but noted even high-paying freight carries distinct vulnerabilities — pharma flows can fall when patents expire and local generic production ramps up.

Rather than backing a single winner, LATAM's strategy is to stay adaptable.

"More than understanding and trying to bet on the next big commodity, what we're trying to do is prepare ourselves to be able to react quickly in a cost-effective fashion in order to respond very well to our customers' needs," Bianchi said.

With US policy having already rerouted Chinese platform volumes once — and Latin American currencies and labour costs still moving — the region's carriers are planning for cargo mixes that can shift again at short notice.