SF Group, one of the country’s biggest delivery and logistics firms, said it was planning a major international expansion into Southeast Asia and Europe that would see a rapid build-up in its fleet of aircraft.

    The group, which is widely known as China’s FedEx, currently operates 42 aircraft, mostly Boeing 737s and 757s. Of those, 22 are owned by its unit, SF Airlines.

    “Definitely, we will continue to enlarge our fleet and increase our number of aircraft in the future,” Zep Lee, CEO for SF Group’s international business unit, told Reuters in a rare media interview.

    “Growth in the number of our self-owned aircraft will be in the double-digits next year,” he said, adding that he expected this trend to continue for several years.

    SF, which is known by its brand SF Express, delivers to more than a dozen countries including the United States and Japan. It plans to expand to Britain, France and Germany as well as to Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos in the coming year, Lee said.

    It is also looking at establishing a big centralized cargo hub in China for its aircraft which are currently spread out over several centers.

    Growth in deliveries in and out of China grew 19 times in the past year, due to strong demand in business-to-consumer deliveries, said Ray Li, the international business unit’s chief financial officer.

    Established in the southern Chinese port city of Shunde in 1993 by founder and chairman Wang Wei, SF Express has grown rapidly into one of the country’s biggest delivery firms. It has more than 15,500 service centers, mostly in China, and employs 346,000 people.

    There has been widespread industry speculation about an IPO but Li said that although the company was not ruling it out in the future, it was sufficiently capitalized for now.(SD-Agencies)