Coronavirus: an air bridge between China and the world to deliver masks

Text by: Bruno Faure Follow

To stop the Covid-19 epidemic, the urgency is to import masks from China, the main country of production, to the most affected areas. In the midst of a supply war, an air bridge was set up. Mathieu Friedberg, CEO of Ceva Logistics, oversees this unprecedented transfer.

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RFI : What is the objective of the logistics bridge that your company (subsidiary of CMA-CGM) is implementing?

Mathieu Friedberg: This operation allows us to transport masks and medical equipment from the production points in China to our warehouses in Shanghai. There, we condition them, we put them on Air France planes that arrive at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport where we clear them, before delivery to the various recipients, by land.

Who exactly are your customers?

Today there are three types, almost everywhere in France. The first, for whom it is most urgent, are nursing staff, in hospitals in particular. The second level is public services, local communities and their services. And then there are the so-called essential private operators (in mass distribution for example) who need to run their productions and equip their employees with the necessary protective equipment.

What volumes can you handle?

We deliver with passenger and cargo planes of 600 cubic meters each. If we only loaded masks, it would send 15 to 16 million each time. And since we are not the only operator in this logistics system, we can estimate that there is almost a departure every day.

Given the spread of the epidemic, this operation is eagerly awaited. You have no room for error.

Let's say that for a logistics operator of our size, this is an unprecedented operation in terms of its scale because the demand for protective and medical equipment is very high and much higher than it can be in normal times. But mounting emergency operations is our job. We know how to get air capacity and combine it with ground logistics. We have large teams in China. We work with France and with other destinations in Europe (in the United Kingdom in particular), the United States, Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, etc.). With the reduction of conventional air capacities, we are participating in these operations around the world. We are working on operations towards certain countries in Africa or the Indian Ocean, but it is still a little too early. These are operations that take a little longer to assemble, and we cannot be sure of the availability of production.

Is there a risk that the goods will be intercepted as it could have been the case a few weeks ago with a shipment of masks intended for France and which would have been negotiated by the Americans?

I can only speak to you about the logistics. From the moment the goods are entrusted to us, at the place of production or in our warehouses, interception is completely impossible. If there is interception or negotiation, it is done rather upstream, with the producers, which we do not control.

What about the quality problems of masks from China?

This is indeed one of the main difficulties of the current situation: the mass of demand far exceeds the production capacities of the Chinese market. They had to be raised significantly. As a result, there may have been examples of less scrupulous suppliers for whom the quality of production was not there. But as a logistician, it is something that goes beyond us, which is not our responsibility. I am not in charge of buying the masks and checking their quality. We ensure the integrity of the supply chain from the moment these masks are entrusted to us.

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• Coronavirus
• China
• France
• Health and Medicine

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