Fruitful connections: How avocados can shape airport strategy

Smack in the heart of Shanghai’s former French Concession, at the crossroads of Wulumuqi Road and Wuyuan Road, lies an unassuming store fronting a large sign that reads, “Avocado Lady.”

Curious visitors to Shanghai are often intrigued by the shop’s name, and venture inside to see if there is, indeed, a lady offering avocados for sale. On most days, customers will find the Avocado Lady inside her densely-packed minimart stocked with row after row of imported produce, cheeses and other delicacies, most notably the namesake crates full of avocados. Affixed to each avocado is a small sticker containing a universal price lookup (PLU) code used by cashiers around the world to weigh produce, and most strikingly, the words “Product of Mexico.”

Asking the vendor about the logistics miracle that brought the avocados across the Pacific, from Mexico into China, leads nowhere, however, because her shop purchases its wares directly from wholesalers. Luckily for the Avocado Lady, airfreight professionals scattered across the world work to handle the complicated cool-chain logistics in the most economic and efficient manner possible.

Unbeknownst to Avocado Lady are the connections between her Latin American produce and major logistics gateways in the United States, where one airport, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), deep in the heart of Texas, is working to construct an air bridge between Latin America and Asia.

For more information on innovative airport strategies, join us for networking and discussion at Air Cargo World’s new ELEVATE 2016 Conference, Oct. 10, in Miami. Click here for details.