DHL Global Forwarding, the leading international provider of air, sea and road freight services, announced the launch of its second around-the-world scheduled flight, to connect Asia, Europe and the US. This is in response to the strong growth in demand for air freight capacity, chiefly for outbound services from Asia and on the popular transpacific route. The Boeing 747-400F freighter will operate a South Korea-China-Europe-China service, in addition to transpacific east- and westbound flights that includes Shanghai, China, and Cincinnati, USA.
With a capacity of more than 100 tons per flight, the bi-weekly scheduled flights provide significant and reliable capacity on the transpacific route from Shanghai, China to Cincinnati, USA from where it continues to Incheon, South Korea. Following which, it will connect Incheon, South Korea with Wuxi, China and continue on to Frankfurt-Hahn in West Germany, before returning to Shanghai, China. The service will depart twice per week at each airport.
“We have been seeing an increasing demand for air freight capacities on Asian routes. China remains the largest global trading partner of South Korea[1], Germany[2] and the USA, with China becoming the second nation to top US$600 billion in trade with the USA in 2017[3]. China is Germany’s largest source of import at US$120 billion and its third largest export market at US$105 billion. For South Korea, China is its top import and export country, accounting for close to 25% of its global trade in 2017[4], said Kelvin Leung, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding Asia Pacific.
“To facilitate timely and safe movement of goods between the countries, efficient and reliable logisticsinfrastructure and services are key. The new scheduled flights will streamline the transportation process, thereby optimizing our customers’ supply chains and improving their products’ time to market in today’s highly competitive business environment”, Leung added.
Results from the latest DHL Global Trade Barometer indicate that overall trade index for China recently increased by 2 points from January 2018, and the overall trade index in South Korea remaining well over 50 points at 69, signaling a positive growth for both markets in Q2 2018 which will continue to fuel demand for air freight services.
