Maman’s Cargo Terminal: Customer Concentration, Regulated Pricing, and Market-Share Erosion

The main article already argued that aviation recovery improved Maman’s group picture, but not every asset inside the group improved in the same way. This follow-up isolates the cargo terminal, because this is the historical core asset, the one that should have benefited most from the return of airport activity. In practice, 2025 showed a structure that is far less resilient than the phrase "monopoly terminal" might imply.

The problem is not that the terminal is weak. It is still a material asset: the company describes handling capacity of about 250 thousand tons a year, an authorization that runs through March 31, 2029 with an Israel Airports Authority option to extend by up to four more years, and 2025 segment revenue of ILS 205.8 million alongside parent-attributable profit from ordinary operations of ILS 11.3 million. The problem is different. This is a critical asset, but not an asset that still holds the clean economic power many readers may assume.

Four points frame the read:

• The real concentration is higher than the revenue table first suggests. Agents generated 83% of segment revenue, but airlines choose the terminal, so they also hold the key to the indirect revenue stream.
• Two anchor customers control more than half the tonnage. El Al and CAL together accounted for 55.2% of cargo handled by the terminal in 2025.
• The company’s pricing freedom is constrained precisely when competition matters. Most maximum tariffs are regulated, and as a monopoly the company cannot charge excessively high prices, excessively low prices, or discriminatory terms, while it says competitors do not face the same pricing restrictions.
• An industry recovery year did not become a year of relative recovery for the terminal. Cargo volumes at Ben Gurion rose 10% in 2025, Maman’s terminal handled only 3% more, and market share fell to 56% from 59%.

Where The Real Concentration Sits

This is easy to miss if one looks only at who pays the invoice. In 2025, only 9% of cargo-terminal revenue came directly from airlines, 83% came from agents and customs brokers, and 8% came from end customers. At first glance that looks diversified. In practice, the company explicitly says that once an airline chooses a given terminal, that choice drives not only the direct airline revenue but also the revenue from agents, customs brokers, and end customers. Put differently, the main payer is often not the party making the commercial decision.

That is the difference between accounting concentration and economic concentration. If 83% of the revenue comes from agents, but those agents usually depend on airline decisions about where import and export cargo will pass, then the true dependency still sits with a relatively small number of airlines and large forwarding players. The company also says that in 2025 the segment had one main agent customer whose revenue contribution reached 12% of segment revenue. The filing does not name that customer, which leaves the reader without the ability to judge whether this is a local concentration issue or another link in a wider dependency chain.

This chart matters because of what it hides. It shows that most revenue is not billed directly to airlines. But the company’s own discussion explains that the terminal chosen by an airline also determines the path of the revenue coming from agents. So the right reading is not "concentration is low because airlines are only 9% of revenue." It is close to the opposite: the counterparties that represent only a small share of direct billing may still control a much larger share of the business.

The absence of backlog strengthens that view. The cargo-terminal activity is not characterized by backlog. There is no long contracted order book here that softens volume migration from one terminal to another. This is an asset that lives on current flow, commercial choice, and relationship retention, not on multi-year signed demand.

Two Anchor Customers, But No True Immunity

At the tonnage level, the dependency comes fully into the open. In 2025 El Al accounted for 64,606 tons, or 30.5% of the cargo handled by the terminal. CAL accounted for 52,317 tons, or 24.7%. Together they represented 116,923 tons, or 55.2% of the terminal’s handled cargo. That is a high number for any operating asset, and especially for one that still tends to be read as a critical infrastructure moat.

The El Al picture is mixed. On one hand, in January 2025 the framework agreement was extended through December 31, 2029. On the other hand, either side may terminate during the additional period on 60 days’ notice. That is better than having no agreement at all, but it is not the same thing as locked-in volume.

The CAL picture is more sensitive still. In March 2025 the parties signed an updated agreement with agreed consideration for five years, yet here too each side may terminate on prior notice. Beyond that, the company explicitly states that CAL belongs to the shareholder group of Swissport Israel, which heightens the concern that CAL may in the future decide to obtain all or most of its services from the competing terminal. This is not a theoretical risk buried in the back of the filing. It sits inside the terminal’s actual competitive structure.

The 2025 movement of these two customers adds another layer. El Al’s share of handled tonnage fell to 30.5% from 35.7% in 2024, while CAL’s rose to 24.7% from 22.5%. So concentration did not disappear, it only shifted slightly. A superficial reading might conclude that the terminal still enjoys two stable anchor customers. The more accurate reading is that it sits on two fragile axes: one customer that remains very large but is less dominant than a year earlier, and another that is growing while also maintaining a structural tie to the main competitor.

Regulation Limits Pricing Exactly When Competition Bites

Maman’s story is not only about competition. It is competition inside a regulatory box. The company operates under an authorization agreement signed in 2013, and the current authorization runs until March 31, 2029, with an Israel Airports Authority option to extend by up to four additional years. That provides operating visibility, but it also reminds readers that this is not an open-ended perpetual right.

On top of that, the company was declared a monopoly in 1995 in the field of management, operation, and supply of cargo-terminal services in air transport. This is not just a legal label. The company itself lists three practical economic constraints: it may not set an excessively high price or an excessively low one, it may not discriminate among similar customers by setting different terms for similar transactions, and it may not unreasonably refuse service. In the same discussion, it says that to the best of its knowledge competitors are not subject to similar pricing restrictions and are free to price deals even at a loss and to differentiate between customers.

That is the economic contradiction at the center of the asset. On one hand, its historical role as a critical terminal is preserved. On the other hand, that very status limits the main tool a terminal usually uses when defending share: price, commercial terms, and flexibility in offering different packages to similar customers.

The regulatory history tells its own story about asset quality. The company says it approached the finance and transport ministers as far back as 2017 seeking cancellation of the price oversight on the grounds that the conditions had already been met. The price committee repeated in 2022 its recommendation to keep the oversight in place, and in 2023 and 2024 it recommended a phased tariff update and the cancellation of recognition of airline discount tariffs. As of the report date, the ministers still had not approved that update. In other words, even as competition broadened, Maman still did not receive a clean path out of the regulated-pricing box.

Market Recovery Did Not Fully Accrue To Maman

This is what makes 2025 so important to the read of the asset. The terminal’s own handled cargo rose 3% in 2025. On the surface, that sounds fine. But cargo handled at Ben Gurion overall rose 10%. As a result, Maman’s market share fell to 56% from 59% in 2024. In 2023 it stood at 57%. Maman did not lose its position overnight, but neither did it preserve its relative power in a recovery year.

The filing also hints at why. In 2024 the company linked the rise in terminal tonnage to the fact that Israeli airlines represented the bulk of activity at Ben Gurion while most foreign airlines had stopped flying to Israel. In the 2025 aviation-services section it already describes a gradual recovery from the third quarter onward, including the return of many foreign airlines and a rise in flight volumes. In outcome terms, the aviation environment did improve, but Maman’s cargo terminal did not benefit to the same extent as the market as a whole.

That matters for two reasons. First, 2025 was not only a better volume year, but also a reasonably supportive mix year, because the company says the increase at the terminal came mainly from imports, and imports are generally more profitable than exports because storage periods are longer and storage uses relatively less labor. If market share still eroded under those conditions, simple industry recovery was not enough to stabilize the terminal’s relative economics.

Second, even the segment figures are not a pure cargo-handling number. The company notes that rental income from terminal-area real estate, including the office wing inside the terminal, is included in the cargo-terminal segment because management views it as integral to the activity. So the ILS 205.8 million of segment revenue and the ILS 11.3 million of parent-attributable profit from ordinary operations are important figures, but they do not reflect only the economics of cargo handling and storage itself. The reported segment number is a little less clean than it first appears.

So the right 2025 reading is not "the terminal returned to growth, therefore the asset strengthened." The more accurate version is different: the terminal remained profitable, kept high handled volumes, and improved the reported numbers, but it did so while losing market share, inside a constrained pricing regime, and with a customer concentration profile that does not support treating it as a fully insulated asset.

Bottom Line

Maman’s cargo terminal remains too important to dismiss as a side activity. It still rests on a relatively long authorization, real entry barriers, large handling capacity, and a base of more than 200 thousand tons a year. But 2025 shows that the right way to read it is not as a simple infrastructure moat. It is a concentrated and regulated operating asset whose commercial power depends heavily on the decisions of a small number of airlines, while part of its defensive flexibility is limited by the very regulation attached to its historical position.

Current thesis: the cargo terminal remains Maman’s historical anchor, but 2025 showed that it behaves more like a concentrated operating asset with limited pricing power than like a fully protected infrastructure asset that naturally holds its share.

What changed versus the earlier read: the debate is no longer whether aviation activity recovered. It is whether the cargo terminal can turn that broader recovery into relative improvement in its own position. In 2025, that answer is still not convincing.

Counter-thesis: one can argue that this reading is too harsh, because even after the 2025 erosion Maman still held 56% of the market, increased handled volume, improved the segment’s attributable profit, and maintained extended agreements with two anchor customers through 2029 or for the next five years.

What can change the read over the short to medium term: a halt in the share erosion, proof that the return of aviation activity is translating into faster improvement at Maman than at competitors, and real stability of El Al and CAL at the terminal even as the competitive environment normalizes.

Why this matters: because the cargo terminal is not just another segment inside Maman. It is the asset on which much of the group’s historical story still rests. If even a recovery year reveals high concentration, constrained commercial flexibility, and market-share erosion, then the quality of this asset needs a stricter reading across the whole group.