Over the past 48 hours, charter broker Chapman Freeborn said it has "experienced a surge in cargo charter requests for humanitarian cargo and medical supplies (typically N95 respirators)" from China into Europe and Africa.
This comes after an extremely busy week of EU-US rotations to counter the demand created by passenger travel ban – utilising in-house assets to bring capacity to the market, the company said.
The broker is now facilitating hundreds of tons of critical aid supplies into affected areas.
China is the world’s largest producer of medical face masks, with over 100m manufactured per day (increased by around 500% since the beginning of the pandemic). These masks are being transported around the world to support the medical response.
Pierre Van der Stichele, Chapman Freeborn cargo director, said: “We are all extremely busy with requests for urgent cargo leaving China. Not only our European and African offices but our offices in North America also.
“The biggest issue that we’re facing is capacity – there is a real shortage. However, we’ve managed to fix a number of immediate flights using cancellations (due to transit delays within China).”
