IN Brief:
- Kalé Logistics Solutions and e-Smart Logistics have formed a strategic air cargo visibility partnership.
- The collaboration will combine Kalé’s cloud cargo systems with e-SL’s ecommerce logistics expertise.
- The agreement targets piece-level and SKU-level visibility for ecommerce, healthcare, aerospace, automotive, and high-value cargo.
Kalé Logistics Solutions has entered into a strategic partnership with e-Smart Logistics to improve visibility and tracking across air cargo shipments, with a focus on ecommerce, healthcare, aerospace, automotive, and high-value goods.
The collaboration brings together Kalé’s cloud-based air cargo technology with e-Smart Logistics’ end-to-end logistics expertise. Announced during the TIACA Executive Summit in Warsaw, the agreement is designed to give airlines and cargo operators greater transparency at individual shipment and SKU level.
The partnership will use Kalé’s AvSys platform, launched earlier this year, to support piece-level tracking and improve operational compliance. By extending visibility beyond shipment-level status, airlines will be able to offer more granular tracking across parcel, ecommerce, and high-value cargo flows.
e-Smart Logistics works with airlines on ecommerce cargo, network capability, and shipment visibility. Its activity also covers healthcare, aerospace, automotive, and high-value goods, where delay, damage, or lost visibility can carry greater operational cost than in standard freight movements.
Amar More, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Kalé Logistics Solutions, said: “E-commerce and high-value shipments continue to be growing verticals for the air cargo industry, and shippers are demanding more visibility for each package. This partnership provides airlines with the tools to enhance their product portfolios, allowing them to compete for traffic by offering the piece and parcel-level visibility demanded, and the service quality shippers expect.”
Denis Ilin, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at e-Smart Logistics, said: “Global airlines are competing in an increasingly complex environment where product portfolios must be developed to meet expectations around speed, transparency, quality, compliance, and cost effectiveness.
“These demands continue to rise, with all becoming non-negotiable requirements for shippers and authorities. This partnership will help airlines meet these requirements and achieve end-to-end capabilities through a ‘virtual integrator’ solution powered by Kalé and e-Smart Logistics.”
Air cargo has always sold speed, yet speed alone is less useful when shipment data remains fragmented. Airlines, freight forwarders, handlers, customs systems, ecommerce platforms, and final-mile networks all generate operational events, but those events often sit across separate systems. Visibility platforms create value by joining those events into a usable operating record.
Piece-level tracking is especially important for ecommerce air freight because parcel flows do not behave like conventional palletised consignments. Volumes are fragmented, service expectations are high, and exceptions multiply quickly when parcels move across airline, airport, customs, and delivery networks. Airlines that can provide better parcel-level visibility can strengthen their offer to ecommerce logistics providers and marketplace-linked shippers.
Healthcare and high-value cargo add a second layer of complexity. These shipments can require chain-of-custody records, temperature assurance, milestone evidence, and fast exception escalation. In those settings, visibility is part of operational control and compliance management, rather than only a customer-service feature.
The pressure to align physical and digital cargo flows can also be seen in infrastructure decisions, including KLM’s cargo relocation at Amsterdam Schiphol, where airport estate redesign is intended to create a more centralised cargo area. A modern air cargo hub needs truck access, secure handling, ULD movement, customs interfaces, and digital handovers to operate as a single process rather than a set of disconnected functions.
The partnership also shows how air cargo technology is becoming more specialised. Generic tracking portals are giving way to systems built around product type, shipment sensitivity, and service promise. For airlines, that creates a route to differentiate cargo products without relying only on capacity, rate, or lane coverage.
Deployment depth will determine the strength of the model. If the combined system can give airlines reliable SKU-level visibility across real operating conditions, it could help close one of air cargo’s persistent gaps: knowing not just that cargo has moved, but exactly which piece is where, under which conditions, and what action is needed when the plan changes.
