China’s country-wide floriculture trade annually is an over US$8 billion business and good news for air cargo carriers, the central government is aiming to turn its focus from the domestic to international market. Brian Thomson reports fromChengdu, China.

Yunnan Province is one of the major areas for flower farming in China with the area under cultivation for cut flowers increasing in just one year by 15 per cent, showing the eagerness of the industry to expand.

Currently, some 80 per cent of local production goes to inland cities and 15 per cent is exported, mainly to Southeast Asia. In the opposite direction flowers are flown up to Urumuji in the far northwest of China for transshipment by road, or air, into Russia and neighbouring countries.

In Chinese flower markets, the affluent middle class are loading up their BMWs and Lexus’ with exotic plants, railed or flown from Kunming, capital city of Yunnan. Chengdu in neighbouring Sichuan alone, receives two to three tonnes of airfreighted plants daily. On Mother’s Day, Valentines Day and at the Spring Festival the tonnage shoots up even higher.

The Australian Lynch Group, a major importer of flowers is a steady customer of Yunnan’s horticultural production. “We distribute to 1,200 supermarkets and despite the economic climate we could easily take a quarter of a million stems (10 metric tonnes) each week at our reception centers in Brisbane, Sydney,Melbourne and Perth,” said the Lynch Group’s Kunming based manager, GregRyan. “We have, in the past, sent flowersto all of these cities either via Hong Kongor Bangkok”.

Flower trade big business for carriers
Flowers are clearly big business out of Yunnan, with up to 75 per cent of all cargoes going out of the airport consisting of flowers, according to Lin Jie, general manager of Yunnan Logistics, one of two handling companies on the airport.

The second handling company is China Eastern Airlines, which are in the enviable situation of handling export cargoes for other carriers and at the same time providing their own flights to the same destinations as their customers.

Major airlines carrying the flower trade are Thai, Dragonair, Malaysian, China Eastern and Air China. Winnie Tong, a cargo executive for Dragonair in Kunming said the world economic downturn had not impacted Dragonair’s business.

“Our cargo figures for the first quarter of 2009 are up by 20 per cent,” said Tong. “We carry about 10 tonnes of flowers every day through Hong Kong and we can reach five destinations in Japan within 20 hours. With their high lifestyle the Japanese are big customers.”

Malaysian Airlines carries some 33 tonnes of flowers per week with a diversity of end-destinations, including Paris, Jeddah, Singapore and Sydney, according to the carrier’s area manager Moh Ung Chuang.

In competition to Thai Airways, a local company in Kunming is offering a twiceweekly trucking service to Bangkok with a transit time of two days. However this is believed to be fraught with problems at Laotian border posts.

Better facilities needed
The cargo area of Kunming’s airport needs improved facilities for horticultural exports say most of the major carriers. A tour around the cluttered receiving area shows that enlargement and better access roads are also needed.

The China Aviation Administration in their annual reports for 2007/8 concur, making the clear statement that: “Regional airports cannot meet the demand of air transport requirements,” for horticultural products, which includes a shortage of skilled manpower.

Renee Snijders of the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture’s support office in Kunming is in agreement saying, “it is a long road for it to be a successful industry. The infrastructure needs to get better, the transport sector is very undeveloped with only a few refrigerated vehicles.”

Kunming Airport’s single 3,800 metre runway at an altitude of 1,895 meters, is also subject to sudden directional wind changes. “On one occasion the wind made an abrupt change of 180 degrees, which meant that the direction for the aircraft taking off had to be reversed,” said Thai Airways’ cargo manager at the airport, Gou Xin.

“Because of the surrounding hills, this change altered the whole scenario for the pilot. He instructed us to offload ten tonnes of freight – a cargo of flowers destined for Japan – and of course transit time was crucial. To overcome this, we diverted the load onto local domestic flights northbound to Chengdu, meeting up with another Thai service from Chengdu back to Bangkok.”

Talk of a new Kunming airport – which is China’s seventh largest cargo airport, handling 232,000 tonnes of cargo in 2007 is likely to be completedby 2011-2012.