IN the first half of year, the Shenzhen airport’s cargo throughput climbed by 25.2 percent year on year, reaching 770,000 tons. Its international cargo throughput has increased by over 50 percent, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

The data signals that the airport’s freight operation has maintained strong momentum.

Recently, UPS Airlines announced its new cargo route between Shenzhen and Osaka, Japan. UPS Airlines will operate this new route five times a week, bring the total number of its flights to 16 a week to meet the booming export market demand. Osaka’s Kansai International Airport is one of the world’s busiest for cargo. The freight route will help Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Dongguan connect with other destinations in Asia, North America and Europe.

Other newly added cargo routes include Central Airlines’ route from Shenzhen to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and SF Airlines’ route from Shenzhen to Bangkok, Thailand.

The airport has newly added or increased frequency for cargo flights to 12 international destinations this year, reaching a total of 30 international and regional destinations for air freights.

The rapid development of e-commerce industry has strengthened the link between the Shenzhen airport and Southeast Asia. There are seven cargo destinations in the region, including Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Manila, Clark, Kota Kinabalu and Ho Chi Minh City. The weekly cargo flights between Shenzhen and these cities have been over 60. More frequent flights facilitate import and export trade.

The Shenzhen airport has further enhanced freight routes between Shenzhen and Europe as well as North America. It opened a cargo route to Frankfurt, Germany this year, and has grown the number of flights on hot routes, including Shenzhen-Chicago, Shenzhen-Luxembourg and Shenzhen-Cologne.

“We have seen that business processing is getting more and more efficient in the past two years,” said a manager with Shenzhen’s MBE International Co. Ltd. The current imported cold-chain goods volume keeps rising, as customs and the airport have optimized goods clearance procedures.

This year, the Shenzhen airport partnered with enterprises, freight forwarders and customs to jointly improve air cargo business services on express delivery, duty-free products, e-commerce goods and so on. It started using international cargo refrigeration warehouses in May, bringing with it a massive jump in cold-chain goods volume.

The Shenzhen airport said that it has adopted stringent pandemic control and prevention measures, including conducting nucleic acid testing and disinfection of cargos on arrival. (Xia Yuanjie)