China to launch cargo flight carrying fresh food from South America in May

A cargo flight carrying fresh food including salmon from South America to China is expected to start service on May 5, the logistics arm under China Eastern Airlines said on Thursday, the company said it is the first such cargo flight flying from South America.

The flight will start from Santiago in Chile to Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

China Eastern said its logistics arm has started chartered cargo flight from 2013, with the business initially shipping cherries from Chile.

To better tap into market demand, China Eastern's logistics company set up a company to import fresh food in 2022. In 2022 alone, the logistics arm operated more than 600 fresh food flights, and imported more than 20,000 tons of fresh food valued of more than 6 billion yuan ($870.94 million).

In February, the logistics arm of China Eastern resumed its Chilean salmon import business with a weekly import volume increasing to a current 40-50 tons。

Currently, China is Chile's largest trading partner and Chile is China's third largest trading partner in Latin America. Data released by China Customs showed that the bilateral trade in 2022 was $67 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.8 percent.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said the cargo flight volume has maintained a rapid recovery, which the industry transported 570,000 tons of cargo in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 5.5 percent over the same period in 2019.