Solutions and shipments
In our 80 years, we’ve never shied away from meeting challenging customer requests to test our cargo skills. Our zeal for customer service combined with air cargo’s growing capabilities, and the industry’s ever-more demanding requirements, led us to create a winning suite of shipment solutions. So now when it comes to shipping a world of possibilities – and we've had some memorable shipments – We Know How.
The world was and remains our oyster
Cathay Cargo’s expertise in handling perishables dates back to our founder, Roy Farrell, bringing oysters to Hong Kong on some of his earliest flights from Australia. The flight time back then was 32 hours, yet these were “brought alive in the shell from the Sydney Oyster Beds in the same time as they reach the Sydney householder,” the ad in the South China Morning Post exclaimed.
Back to today and our jet aircraft mean we are within five hours reach of 50 per cent of the world’s population, with the speed and cold-chain care of Cathay Fresh bringing perishable produce of all types and as nature intended to the world.
Bear necessity to optimal welfare
Cathay Cargo flew a bear for the first time in 1974. Bertha, as she became known, was found in a Mong Kok residential block stairwell and was eventually caught by the police. As there was no room at the zoo in the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens, Cathay Cargo offered to fly her for free to any interested zoo on the network. She was eventually flown to Taiwan. Since then, Cathay Cargo has flown many ursine passengers, not least the Ocean Park giant pandas gifted to Hong Kong in 2024, along with many other four-legged friends including the horses for the Hong Kong International Horse Show, all benefitting from the Cathay Live Animal solution that puts welfare very much first.
Diamonds are forever
Flying valuables has always relied on keeping things secure. The photograph from 1970 shows Cathay ground team showcasing jewellery and other valuables that could be placed in new secure boxes for travel, under the watchful eye of two security guards. These days, if you need currency, bullion or even priceless Egyptian artefacts moving, Cathay Secure offers strongrooms, surveillance, augmented by AI, to spot neglected cargo and suspicious loitering in the warehouse, as well as priority booking and uplift for valuables.
A trusted treatment transporter over time
Transport of pharmaceuticals has become an exacting business, as therapies and vaccines have become more complex, as have the demands of pharma logistics. It would not be possible now, as it was in 1969, to see a shipment of cholera vaccine on the ramp.
Today, vaccines and other therapies are generally transported in a cooltainer, which itself could be in a thermal dolly to limit the effects of ambient temperature before loading – all part of the Cathay Pharma service of dedicated and handling throughout.
Beaujolais Nouveau gets old over time
The annual Beaujolais Nouveau race was a wildly successful piece of marketing that brought kudos to a mediocre young wine from Burgundy – bottled and “ready to drink” in November each year. In 1982, the editor of The Sunday Times newspaper in London offered £10,000 to the first person to bring him a bottle after release day. The hype caught on in Asia, especially in Japan. In 1990, Cathay Cargo filled two 747 charters with 256 tonnes of wine for Tokyo. By 2004, Japan was importing 12 million bottles, but by 2021 total demand had fallen to 3.6 million as the allure faded. Today, Cathay Cargo still handles some Beaujolais Nouveau shipments, though most wine transported today is of a quality to justify the cost of airfreight.
Jurassic spark – and other heavyweights
Possibly one of the oldest and more unusual cargoes ever shipped arrived in Hong Kong from Kunming back in 2008. In four plain wooden crates were the bones of a prehistoric Lufengosaurus, an early-Jurassic-period dinosaur. A gift from Yunnan Province in the Chinese Mainland, the reassembled 180-million-year-old skeleton now resides in the Hong Kong Science Museum.
Today, the Cathay Expert solution ensures safe passage for priceless relics, such as the Terracotta Warriors , and other out of gauge or super-heavy shipments from jet engines to generators.
New solutions
While Cathay Cargo had long offered bespoke services for shipments requiring extra care, 2006 marked the launch of a branded range of products for special shipments . “The LIFT products aimed to raise awareness through more distinctive branding and segmentation ,” said a youthful Manager Cargo Sales & Marketing Ronald Lam. He has since progressed to be Chief Executive of the Cathay Group, while in 2022, the LIFT products were replaced by a refreshed range of Cathay Cargo special shipment solutions.
Fresh fruit, now all the time
John Antico of Antico International – an Australian produce company and a pioneer in air exports – spoke in Sydney in 1980 about the perils of the air-freight, while then exporting 2,000 tonnes of Australian fruit using waxed cardboard boxes.“ The temperature here during summer can rise to over 100°F,” he said. “So the fruit comes in hot, is taken up to 35,000 feet, and then offloaded in a hot Asian or Middle East climate again, all of which makes it sweat. We have to watch out for these hazards.”
John recently celebrated his 50th year at Flemington market and still oversees exports that have grown exponentially in that time, and Antico still uses Cathay Cargo’s Cathay Fresh especially for seasonal exports of Tasmanian cherries to Asia.
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