Mercury Americas had its best year yet in 2017 in terms of both sales and in tonnage.

Mercury Americas Co-Founder and Managing Partner Felipe Kaplan said the company had an excellent year, and they saw big demand to Asia, particularly to China, Hong Kong and Japan – and also to Latin America – mainly Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

Kaplan attributes some of their success to efforts they made to improving the customer experience. Namely, they implemented airway bill tracking on the Mercury Americas webpage. “Now all of the information is there because we built a special program in order to check what’s going on with our cargo in the different airlines,” Kaplan said.

They also implemented an app for all of the sales agents, improving the way the agents were able to help customers.

Additionally, Kaplan said, their role in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria was also an important highlight of 2017. In September, a category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds made direct landfall on Puerto Rico, creating a humanitarian disaster that affected more than 3 million people.

“There was a big demand for support to Puerto Rico,” he said. The company sent multiple flights to the devastated territory, bringing food and water to the people there.

Looking ahead to 2018, “we have a big challenge, because we want to do more than we did last year,” Kaplan said.  They hope to expand the company’s focus to other markets in Europe, and to increase activity to and from Asia. “That will be our main focus in 2018,” he said.