Ezhou Huahu Airport is anticipated to develop the transport efficiency of air freight as well as make China more open, as the airport will enable goods to be transported to anywhere in China overnight and overseas destinations in two days, a Chinese newswire said.

The Ezhou airport has already opened two cargo routes to Shenzhen and Shanghai, and is planning to include international routes connecting to Osaka in Japan and Frankfurt in Germany this year. It is also expected to launch about 10 international cargo routes and 50 domestic routes by 2025, as the cargo and mail throughput reaches 2.45 million tonnes.

China’s courier companies handled a record high of over 108 billion parcels last year and this figure is projected to maintain stable growth in 2022, as per China’s State Post Bureau. SF Express, which is the country’s top logistics service provider, plays a pivotal role at the Ezhou airport just like how FedEx Express oversees most of the cargo at Memphis International Airport in the US.

Moreover, SF Express even holds a 46 per cent stake in Hubei International Logistics Airport Co., Ltd., which is the operator of Ezhou Huahu Airport. SF Express intends to process the majority of its packages through the new airport later on, the newswire added.

The builders of the project have even applied for more than 70 patents and copyrights for new technologies including 5G, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence to make the airport safer, greener, and smarter. Due to an intelligent cargo sorting system, the transfer centre’s handling production capacity is approximately 280,000 parcels per hour in the short term, but can go up to 1.16 million pieces per hour in the future.

Apart from cargo flights, the airport also offers passenger flight services for the eastern Hubei region. Seven passenger routes connecting Ezhou with nine destinations, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Kunming have already started functioning.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (NB)