Bournemouth Airport has accomplished a vital milestone by securing a novel freighter carrier from Urumqi Diwopu World Airport in northwest China. This unique route, which operates four round journeys per week with a flight time of ten hours, marks a vital enhancement within the airport’s world connectivity and its feature within the UK’s logistics and e-commerce sectors.
Strategic importance
Urumqi, positioned within the Xinjiang save of China, has been expanding its world freight routes, and the unique carrier to Bournemouth is a testament to its ambitions. The Urumqi Diwopu World Airport now operates freight routes to eight countries, alongside with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Hungary. The addition of Bournemouth to this network underscores the rising importance of the UK as a needed hyperlink in world present chains, in particular within the abruptly expanding e-commerce market.
For Bournemouth Airport, this unique route represents a severe growth of its world cargo operations. Managed by the Regional and City Airports (RCA) team, Bournemouth has, in most up-to-date years, positioned itself as a viable replace to the more congested London airports. This strategic positioning has allowed Bournemouth to emerge as a vital import hub for the UK’s e-commerce market, some of the largest within the sphere.
UK’s e-commerce market
The institution of this unique freight route from Urumqi would possibly maybe be very vital for the UK’s e-commerce sector. As some of the largest e-commerce markets globally, the UK relies heavily on environment friendly and unswerving air cargo providers and products to meet person demand. Bournemouth’s feature as a vital import centre is seemingly to be additional bolstered by this unique hyperlink, offering UK companies and patrons sooner and more relate bag entry to to products from northwest China.
This development comes on the heels of alternative strategic expansions in Urumqi’s freight network. Earlier this month, SF Airlines, a vital Chinese language cargo carrier, launched a novel route between Urumqi and Budapest in Hungary. This route used to be particularly designed to support the rising demand for e-commerce, agricultural, and speciality products.
Growing hub
Bournemouth Airport has passed through a transformation, in particular in its air cargo operations. The airport is home to European Cargo’s mercurial of Airbus A340-600 freighters, which already feature traditional flights to and from Chengdu, central China, and Haikou within the south. The addition of the Urumqi route additional solidifies Bournemouth’s situation as a key player within the UK’s air freight landscape.
Per this development, Bournemouth’s in-home facing arm, Cargo First, has been instrumental in managing the elevated cargo volume. The airport has been actively expanding its infrastructure and team to accommodate this development. In June 2024, European Cargo and Cargo First announced plans in an effort to add three more Airbus A340 freighters to their mercurial, with one plane already added in July and two more anticipated by October. This growth is a clear indication of Bournemouth’s dedication to scaling its operations and improving its ability to tackle more cargo routes, though particular routes for these unique plane bear yet to be confirmed.
To toughen this growth, Cargo First has recruited 15 unique members in warehousing, plane facing, and safety roles at some stage within the final year. This amplify in personnel is needed for inserting forward the excessive standards of carrier which bear change into synonymous with Bournemouth Airport’s cargo operations.
