IN Brief:
- Cargo Professional supported more than 250,000 tonnes of freight during its first ten full months at Toronto Pearson.
- The September 2025 changeover replaced both PLC-level controls and the higher-level ULD management environment.
- Air Canada Cargo is preparing a new ETV, Mobile Transfer Device and future automated storage and retrieval system.
Air Canada Cargo has completed a year of live operation on its upgraded control environment at Toronto Pearson International Airport, with Lödige Industries’ Cargo Professional platform supporting more than 250,000 tonnes of freight during its first ten full months.
The milestone follows a control system changeover on 30 September 2025. Air Canada Cargo’s legacy system was switched off at midnight and operations resumed on the new Lödige environment one hour later, supported by 24-hour maintenance and remote monitoring through the supplier’s Customer Care Center.
The project replaced two connected layers of terminal control. At equipment level, programmable logic controllers manage the movement of physical machinery. Above that sits the management environment used to organise unit load devices and cargo movements through the terminal. Cargo Professional brings those processes onto a common data platform.
That integration reduces the number of manual interfaces between equipment control and cargo management. In a large airfreight terminal, the distinction is important because pallets and containers have to move between receiving areas, storage positions, build-up and breakdown processes and aircraft transfer points while the system maintains an accurate record of their location and priority.
A control problem can therefore affect much more than a single machine. If an item cannot be located accurately or a transfer is not recorded correctly, the resulting delay can affect warehouse space, truck collection, flight cut-offs and the availability of handling equipment elsewhere in the terminal.
The first ten full months of live operation provide an initial measure of the new environment at scale. More than 250,000 tonnes of cargo passed through the system during that period, giving Air Canada Cargo and Lödige a substantial operating base from which to assess stability before further automation is introduced.
The companies have not published a like-for-like percentage productivity improvement against the previous control platform. The evidence available after the first year therefore relates primarily to system continuity and the ability to support live cargo volume rather than a claimed step-change in terminal throughput.
The next phase will add more physical automation. Planned work includes a new Elevating Transfer Vehicle and a Mobile Transfer Device, while parts of the terminal are being prepared for a future automated storage and retrieval system. Those additions are intended to improve unit load device movement, storage and overall material flow.
The sequence matters operationally. Installing additional automated equipment without a stable control layer can create more machines without improving the flow of cargo between them. Air Canada Cargo has instead operated the new digital environment for a full year before moving deeper into automated handling.
That gives engineering and operating teams time to understand system behaviour under real freight volumes, establish maintenance routines and identify exceptions before the control environment is asked to coordinate more complex equipment. The approach also reduces the risk of trying to diagnose new software and new mechanical systems simultaneously during live operations.
Toronto Pearson is a central cargo point in Air Canada’s network and handles general freight alongside pharmaceuticals, perishables and other time-sensitive shipments. Those cargoes place different requirements on the terminal, but all depend on accurate movement and location information once freight enters the handling process.
Air cargo technology is increasingly moving towards this type of connected operating environment. CargoAi and Riege recently expanded standardised tracking data across more than 260 airlines, bringing shipment milestones directly into forwarding software rather than requiring operators to check individual carrier systems manually.
The Toronto project applies a similar principle inside the terminal. Equipment automation becomes more useful when status and movement data can be shared across the wider operation. An Elevating Transfer Vehicle or storage system may move freight quickly, but the control layer still has to know which unit should move next, where space is available and whether downstream equipment can accept it.
Maintenance is therefore part of the automation architecture rather than an activity that begins after commissioning. Lödige has continued providing round-the-clock maintenance and remote monitoring since the 2025 cutover, reflecting the limited tolerance for prolonged control-system downtime in a terminal operating around airline schedules.
The one-hour transition itself was a demanding implementation target, but a year of live operation is the more useful measure. Cargo terminals cannot stop handling freight for extended system changes without affecting flights, trucking appointments, warehouse capacity and customer commitments.
The future automated storage and retrieval system will raise the integration requirement again. Storage equipment will have to coordinate with existing cargo handling, ULD movements and transfer machinery, while operators retain visibility of where individual loads are located and when they need to reach the next process.
More than 250,000 tonnes moving through Cargo Professional during its first ten full months gives the next phase a proven control base rather than a newly commissioned platform. The measure of the programme will now shift from whether the digital environment remains stable to whether the additional equipment can improve flow, storage utilisation and operational flexibility without creating new bottlenecks elsewhere in the terminal.
