YTO Airlines signs a cooperation agreement with Shaanxi Province to jointly build YTO Express' delivery hub and air cargo base in northwest China, Aug. 8, 2016. (Photo/Chinanews.com)
(ECNS) -- Chinese private courier companies are stepping up capacity-building in the air cargo sector amid fierce competition in conventional land transport, the Economic Information Daily reported on Tuesday.
On Sept. 8, YTO Airlines, a Hangzhou-based express cargo carrier operated by Shanghai courier company YTO Express, signed a cooperation agreement with Shaanxi Province to jointly build YTO Express' delivery hub and air cargo base in northwest China.
Previously, Yu Weijiao, chairman of YTO Express, revealed a decision to invest 3 billion yuan ($450 million) in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, to build YTO's headquarters and air transport hub in southwest China.
The moves came after the Civil Aviation Administration of China gave the nod in early April to SF Express, another private courier company, to build a civil airport in Ezhou City in central China's Hubei Province as part of a joint move to build an international logistics hub there.
The Ezhou airport will operate both cargo and passenger flights, with a focus on cargo delivery. It aspires to become Asia's largest and the world's fourth largest air cargo logistics hub.
Moreover, the companies are also expanding their fleets. On Sept. 5, SF Airlines' third B767-300 cargo plane landed in Shenzhen, boosting the number of the company's all-cargo planes to 34, the largest among domestic cargo airline companies.
Meanwhile, YTO's fifth cargo plane landed smoothly in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Sept. 7. The company aims to have 30 self-owned cargo planes in its fleet by 2020.
According to industry data, 80 percent of China's domestic mail and parcels are delivered by road, 15 percent by air and less than five percent by other means. Experts say the bottleneck lies in insufficient cargo airports and planes.
