Beijing based Harmony shipping and forwarding agent Co Ltd, is a leading international airfreight services provider with a strong network in the North and East of China. The company operates branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Qingdao, Dalian, Hohhot and Zhengzhou.
Harmony was established in Beijing, China in 2003, as a full-service, IATA accredited cargo agent. IATA accredited cargo agent focusing in airfreight export and import.
After 15 years of development, the company is the leading independent air cargo services provider in North China and ranks among the top 10 in the Chinese airfreight forwarding market and employs more than 700 professionals.
In this highly competitive air logistics market, what is your leading business sector?
“General cargo represents the main slice of Harmony’s business, including electronics, textiles, pharmaceuticals, automotive, as well as food & drink products. However, the company also handles, for various clients, project cargo such as over-sized machinery, aerospace cargo and time critical projects. Airfreight, Harmony’s core business, consists of about 70% export and 30% import. We serve both local clients and overseas agents with end-to-end services, whilst providing air capacity products to other freight forwarders. The major carriers with whom Harmony works closely includes:
Please describe your network and employee structure.
“Harmony’s 7 branch offices employ over 700 professionals in different roles including, terminal handling, Customs, warehouse, trucking, and office and administration functions such as sales and customer services. Harmony provides door to aircraft (export) and aircraft to door (import) services to clients with all self-owned facilities and own people. Thanks to our staff’s hard work, we can say that Harmony ranks high with the top airlines such as – Air China, Air France/KLM, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, United Airlines, American Airlines, Japan Airlines, All-Nippon Airlines, Lufthansa and Air Bridge Cargo”
Your company has carried out excellent work in human aid and State disaster relief projects please tell us about these projects.
“Some of the significant projects that we have worked on were for the ministry of Foreign Aid of China. As one of the official logistics services providers of China Foreign Aid, Harmony provides logistics services including charters, project cargo, trucking transfer and warehousing. Since 2015, Harmony has been working with China Foreign Aid and organized humanities supplies transportation to Nepal, Cambodia and Mexico. During the earthquake in Nepal, Harmony organized 29 charters of humanitarian and medical supplies to Nepal for China Foreign Aid. In two weeks of time, the charters departed from six cities in China and Harmony organized terminal and in-land logistics supports”.
Please share with us your vision for the next 5 years.
“Certainly. Harmony’s vision is to become a strong Chinese freight forwarder and be a great local partner. Therefore, we focus on developing internal strengths such as airline products, operation gateways, technology applications in operations, service qualities and staff professionalism.”
“In 5 years, we plan to further strengthen our own ability to be a strong local logistics provider and at the same time, work closely with overseas partners for future global development”.
Are you finding the right quality cooperation with Neutral Air Partners?
“As a Chinese local freight services provider , Harmony relies on overseas partners to cooperate with us on the overseas part of work, such as break-bulk, Customs clearance and delivery for export, pick-up, Customs declaration and terminal handling for import. In such situation, Neutral Air Partners is a great network for us to find and communicate with quality overseas partners in an efficient way. While the major business that NAP members focus on is air cargo, it becomes easier for local airfreight forwarders to find partners with comparable strengths and business focuses.”
MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH NAP
We think NAP is a high-quality platform of air cargo members in major countries/regions. It brings many great opportunities for members get to know each other, understand each other’s business and start to cooperate. To us, we look for partners in other countries that are doing similar business as us, and provide all-round logistics services to clients. In addition, NAP developed a series of technology tools to help members keep track of member information and communication records. We appreciate the works of NAP and believe we could build strong mutual beneficial relationship with members soon.With NAP we can introduce our strengths of services to other members and develop new business. We can also get to know members in other countries/regions who can, in turn, help us with local services and communicate with other members from all over the world”.
This week Michael Sales from World Cargo Vision team invited Harmony’s CEO Shen Tao, to talk about the company’s business strategy and ambitions.
