LESS THAN THREE years from now, the Shanghai hub of express carrier UPS will be ready for commissioning.
Work on the facility was launched soon after the inking of the Aviation Service Agreement between the United States and China, under which UPS was granted additional flights to Shanghai and for the first time, flights to Guangzhou. It is scheduled to start operations in late-2007.
UPS also happens to be one of six US airlines to be granted rights to operate a new all-cargo air service between Hong Kong and third-country cities in conjunction with its US-Hong Kong services.
'We have been awarded six additional flights to operate between Hong Kong and our intra-Asia air hub in the Philippines via Singapore, starting [this month],' UPS Hong Kong's country manager K. K. Leung said.
'These are in addition to the six round-trip flights to Clark, in the Philippines, from Hong Kong, and six flights from Hong Kong to Cologne, Germany, via Mumbai or Dubai, awarded to us in 2003.'
Hong Kong is as important a centre for UPS as Shanghai promises to be. This year the company opened its new operations centre in Kwai Chung. Located at the ATL Logistics Centre, the 36,421-square-foot package-sorting facility will expand the UPS infrastructure and strengthen its operations in Hong Kong.