FedEx Moves Asia-Pacific Hub to Guangzhou

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Feb. 9 – U.S. logistics giant Federal Express will soon move its Asia-Pacific air trans-shipment hub from the Philippines to China’s Guangzhou City.

The company’s Philippine base is located in Subic Bay, a former United States Navy base, 100 kilometers northwest of Manila. Its last shipment of goods, headed for Taiwan, left last Friday.

FedEx’s new China operations will be based from the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport and will open by first half of this year to allow the company “to fully test all systems and processes, as well as work closely with the Guangzhou authorities to ensure all necessary approvals are in place,” reports Xinhua.

Armand Arreza, administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, told Xinhua: The market in China is bigger than the entire market of Southeast Asia. China also gave FedEx rights to handle its domestic cargo, which is huge.”

The Guangzhou FedEx hub, covering a total area of 82,000 square meters, will have a capacity of 179,000 express packages, or more than 1,800 tons per day by the year 2010, connecting its businesses in the Asian Pacific region as well as provide access to its entire network.

The hub will add another 600,000 annual tons of cargo at Baiyun International. Initially, FedEx will allocate 20 cargo aircraft at the airport, which will offer 150 cargo flights to handle between 12,000 and 15,000 tons of weekly cargo.

Airport authorities have laid out plans to expand facilities to handle a projected annual volume of more than 60 million passengers and more than 3 million tons projected of cargo expected by 2015. The airport says it should handle 75 million passengers and 4 million tons of cargo in 2020.