Good news from Shanghai

Shanghai Pudong International Airport Cargo Terminals Co. Ltd (Pactl, the biggest cargo handler at PVG) reported its February handle up 9.5% y-o-y to 81,000 tonnes. This year-over-year growth is highly significant, because it follows a 14.8% volume increase in January – indicating that the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday did not push a huge amount of freight from one month into the other.

Last year, for example, Pactl’s cargo volume was up 17% in January and down 15% in February. Neither result was meaningful on its own, but the combined two-month increase of 1% was roughly in line with industry trends.

The combined January/February total this year is up 12.5% over 2013, to 191,000 tonnes, indicating that there may well be a strengthening of the trend of demand growth that began in mid 2013. This surge in Asian air freight demand will be discussed in detail at Cargo Facts Asia in Hong Kong 1 – 2 April, and we hope you will join us there to learn more. To register, or for more information, click here.

For the month of February, Pactl’s international volume was up 9.3% to 76,000 tonnes, while the much smaller domestic volume rose 12.3% to 5,000 tonnes (most of Shanghai’s domestic cargo moves through nearby Hongqiao Airport).