Air Canada Cargo has handled more than a quarter of a million tonnes of freight at Toronto Pearson International Airport in the first ten full months after switching its terminal control system to Lödige Industries' Cargo Professional software — a throughput figure that now serves as the operational baseline for the carrier's terminal modernization program.

The cutover itself was tight. At midnight on 30 September 2025, the terminal's legacy control system was shut down and replaced with Lödige technology. Operations resumed one hour later. The Lödige Industries Customer Care Center (CCC) has provided 24/7 maintenance and remote monitoring since the transition, with engineering, software, production and on-site teams coordinating the go-live.

The upgrade covered two layers of the terminal's control architecture: the low-level PLC layer and the high-level unit-load-device (ULD) management system. Consolidating these processes on a single data platform reduces manual input, cuts error rates and gives operators terminal-wide transparency, according to Lödige. Those claims now have a year of production data behind them at one of Canada's largest air cargo hubs.

"The first year of live operation demonstrates what is possible when software, controls, engineering, and service are considered as one integrated system. Delivering the transition without disrupting ongoing cargo operations was an important milestone. A year of reliable operation at this scale confirms the strength of the digital foundation we have created together and provides a solid basis for the next stages of modernization," said Jonathan Hardy, Managing Director at Lödige Industries North America.

The single-platform approach is not an end in itself. It creates the flexibility Air Canada Cargo needs for the physical automation now entering the pipeline. The next phase of the Toronto Pearson modernization includes a new Elevating Transfer Vehicle (ETV) and a Mobile Transfer Device (MTD), both workhorses of modern ULD handling that move freight between storage, build-up and truck docks with less manual intervention.

Key areas of the terminal are also being prepared for a future Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) — the most capital-intensive element of the program and one that would restructure material flow at the facility. Lödige has not published a timeline or budget for the ASRS installation, and Air Canada Cargo has not disclosed the investment value of any phase.

For Air Canada Cargo, the stakes extend beyond Toronto. Reliable, automated ULD handling directly affects turnaround times, dock capacity and the terminal's ability to absorb freighter and belly-cargo growth without proportional headcount increases. A control environment that has already demonstrated stability across 250,000-plus tonnes reduces the integration risk attached to each successive hardware addition — the ETV and MTD will plug into a platform already proven at production scale rather than commissioning alongside untested software.

The one-hour cutover and ten-month track record also matter as a reference case for Lödige, which competes with established cargo terminal system integrators for North American modernization contracts at a time when several major hubs are replacing aging controls.

With the control layer stabilized, execution now shifts to the hardware phases: the ETV and MTD installations are next in the sequence, with the ASRS groundwork following as terminal areas are readied.