Etihad Cargo is staking its growth strategy on partnerships rather than organic network building, using its tie-up with Chinese express and logistics operator SF to penetrate a market where local customer relationships decide commercial outcomes.

Stanislas Brun, Chief Cargo Officer at Etihad Cargo, says the relationship gives the Abu Dhabi-based carrier something a foreign operator cannot easily replicate on its own: an existing understanding of the Chinese customer base and business culture.

"The relationship between SF and Etihad is unique because when you want to penetrate a market like China, it is important to have a clear understanding of the customer base," Brun stated. "As a foreign company, through partnerships, we can connect with more international customers and reach deeper into the market. This is the strength of having a partner that already understands local customers and business culture."

The commercial logic

For carriers entering complex trade environments, the strategic calculation is straightforward. Building local infrastructure, winning domestic accounts and learning market mechanics takes years. A partnership compresses that timeline and cuts the capital risk.

Brun frames the arithmetic in deliberately expansive terms. "When we look at future development, we believe strongly in partnerships," he explained. "The relationship with SF will continue to bring positive results because we are combining our respective advantages. We do not look at one plus one as two; we look at one plus one as three."

The model carries direct consequences for shippers and forwarders. Combining carrier and partner networks creates a mixed capacity pool — freighter, passenger belly and partner uplift — which gives customers more flexibility on trade lanes where demand shifts quickly. It also improves capacity utilisation across the combined network, reducing the empty or underloaded sectors that erode airline cargo margins.

Shorter ramp-up on new routes

Network integration is where the partnership pays off fastest. An airfreight network's effectiveness is now measured by how well capacity, connectivity and services work together, with passenger and cargo operations aligned so new routes generate value from day one rather than after a prolonged build-up.

For shippers, that removes a familiar pain point: the uncertainty of routing volume on a freshly launched service. When a new route launches with an existing customer base behind it, the carrier avoids the thin-load months that typically follow a route opening.

"When we develop a new route, we make sure we are presenting the value we can bring through this connection," Brun said. "From the first day of operation, having an existing customer base creates significant advantages. This reduces the ramp-up period normally required to build a route."

That matters commercially. Shorter ramp-ups mean carriers can commit capacity to new lanes earlier, and shippers gain continuity on international trade lanes even as demand patterns shift.

AI and the shift to predictive logistics

Technology is the second pillar of Etihad Cargo's plan. As supply chains grow more complex, visibility and data are becoming decisive for operational performance, pushing carriers beyond reactive disruption management toward identifying problems earlier and acting on better information.

"Connectivity is also about the additional services we can develop together," Brun added. "We are trying to bring together the best of both worlds rather than simply aligning everything. This approach helps us create stronger solutions for customers."

The carrier is deploying artificial intelligence on information-based tasks while keeping human teams on the complex end of customer service. "We are developing solutions that are customer-service focused through artificial intelligence," he continued. "The aim is to keep the human relationship while allowing technology to manage information-based tasks. This enables teams to focus on more complex customer needs."

The longer-term ambition is a predictive logistics environment, where accumulated data improves reliability and supports continuous learning across networks. In a sector where disruption cannot be eliminated, resilience hinges on how fast an operator responds and adapts processes based on operational insight.

Brun takes a pragmatic view of what data can and cannot deliver. "Logistics is not about being 100 percent correct, because otherwise it would be a science rather than an art," he explained. "Having more data allows us to make better decisions and develop better solutions for the future. Transparency across different carriers and movements is what customers increasingly expect."

That expectation of transparency is itself becoming a competitive factor, and one that favours carriers able to aggregate data across partnership networks rather than a single company's operations.

For now, Etihad Cargo's trajectory is clear: partnerships as the growth engine, mixed freighter, belly and partner capacity as the product, and AI-driven data transparency as the differentiator it intends to build on.