вЂњWe are still the worldвЂ™s factory,вЂќ said Wen Shaoqi, Vice President, China Post Group, during the visit of a Lufthansa Cargo delegation in Beijing in August this year, not without pride. Even smaller and medium-sized European online traders often procure their goods directly in China whenever they receive orders. Whether itвЂ™s a pencil case, a mobile phone accessory or a household item вЂ“ anyone ordering goods online today via Alibaba, Amazon or Ebay, for example, can be fairly certain that their order will be shipped directly from China. What is more, the company expects growth rates in this segment to exceed those of the rest of the international trade in goods even in the longer term.

Despite the current slow-down in growth in the airfreight market, China Post anticipates a further increase in traffic by ten percent in 2019 compared with the previous year. A considerable amount of this volume was moved by Lufthansa Cargo. The enabler for this trend is e-commerce: in 2018 the government-owned company with the green and yellow logo shipped over 100,000 tons вЂ“ mostly parcels вЂ“ to Europe using airfreight. The bulk consists of consignments of goods ordered online by consumers located on the other side of the globe. It is a sign of the times that letters make up a very small proportion of the overall volume, although important bank documents are still carried in this way.

This amounts to the entire carrying capacity of a fully loaded Boeing 777F. Each week, and from Shanghai alone, the China Post Group Corporation (China Post) ships over 100 tons of letters and parcels of all sizes on board Lufthansa Cargo aircraft to Europe. One of Lufthansa CargoвЂ™s biggest freight customers in the entire Asia-Pacific region is actually not a typical freight customer, butвЂ¦ a postal company.

China post airmail tracking