Virgin Atlantic Cargo has awarded a three-year cargo handling contract to Menzies Aviation in Australia.

The new agreement saw Menzies take over Virgin Atlantic’s cargo handling in Melbourne on June 8, with Brisbane to follow on 9 July, and Sydney on 7 August.

The move will support Virgin Atlantic’s longstanding international long-haul cargo sales and management agreement with Virgin Australia. Currently, Virgin Atlantic is responsible for marketing the cargo capacity on Virgin Australia’s daily services from Sydney to Los Angeles, its six weekly services from Brisbane to LA, and its five weekly services from Melbourne to Los Angeles. In 2017, this was extended to include Virgin Australia’s new Melbourne-Hong Kong services, and increased again at the start of July when the airline launched daily Sydney-Hong Kong services.

Overall, cargo volumes generated by Virgin Atlantic into Australia in the first quarter of 2018 increased 30.5 per cent, while revenue from Australia also achieved strong growth.

Tania Boyes, Virgin Atlantic Cargo’s Director of Operations, said: “As we develop our services across Australia, we believe that Menzies Aviation are the right partner to help us achieve our goals in this market and will continue the high standard of handling services our customers expect from us. We also wish to thank dnata, our handling partner in Australia for the past three years, for their support of our growth over this period.”

Stuart Key, VP Commercial - Oceania & SE Asia for Menzies, commented: “Menzies Aviation is incredibly pleased to be awarded the international long-haul cargo handling contract. We are looking forward to providing a market leading service whilst using state of the art cargo technology and safe, secure and efficient processes for cargo customers.”