ALEX LENS has taken over from Ron Goertz as regional sales and operations director for Africa, Israel and Turkey at KLM Cargo.
With the airline set to fly daily from June 28, Lens intends to relocate to South Africa and to run the operation from KLM's Johannesburg International Airport head office.
Born in Belgium in 1956, Lens attended university in Brussels where he majored in economics.
He started his professional career in 1981 with handling company Belgavia in Brussels and subsequently worked for American all-cargo carrier, Flying Tigers, Federal Express (which took over Flying Tigers in 1990), and Air Hong Kong.
He joined KLM Cargo in Singapore in 1994, concentrating on operations. In March the next year he transferred to Tokyo to implement the new KLM Cargo strategy and a year later to Dubai where his major objective was to expand the Dubai hub function.
In line with the airline's new business unit approach to markets, Lens will be responsible in South Africa for the Linehaul business unit dealing with freight forwarders. The Air Logistics unit, which looks at shipper accounts, is based in Europe His brief is to ensure that all flights are optimised from a revenue and load factor point of view. In short, I'm here to make money for KLM, he told FTW.
