AIRCRAFT loaded with cargo from China may soon begin landing at MidAmerica St Louis Airport, according to Manuel Aragon, the co-owner of Teqflor Inc of Miami, a company which late last year began delivering flowers from South America to the airport to avoid congestion at Miami airport.
Mr Aragon refused to say how soon, in an interview with the local Belleville News Democrat. "It's like forecasting the weather," he said. "So I'd rather not say except to say in weeks, not months."
The report said that if the China cargo materialises and all goes to plan, air freighters loaded with electronics parts originating from Shanghai would land at MidAmerica at about the same time that cargo planes from South America arrive.
The cargo from the Chinese planes would then be off-loaded and transferred to the aircraft from South America, whose shipments of flowers would be stored at the airport's refrigerated warehouse.
The South American planes, once loaded with the Chinese cargo, would then return to the Southern Hemisphere, to distribute the Chinese-made products to more than a dozen countries.
"We continue to work every day to bring more cargo into MidAmerica," said Mark Kern, the chairman of the St Clair County Board, which oversees the airport, without giving a precise date for the arrival of Chinese cargo at the airport. "That certainly is part of the plan, to connect Asia to South America through MidAmerica Airport."
Last June Teqflor leased most of the airport's 50,000 square-foot warehouse for a 20-year period and agreed to pay St Clair County from this June US$365,000 annually for nine years to reimburse it for spending $3 million on two big refrigeration units to store the flowers.
The report added that Teqflor is receiving free use of the $8 million warehouse for the first decade of the deal, while St. Clair County expects to earn $200,000 annually in landing fees owing to the deal.
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