Continuous strong demands from the US and Europe contributed to a healthy growth of 12.4% in air cargo tonnage compared to July last year. A total of 289,000 tonnes were handled at the airport in July 2005.

July also set a new monthly record for aircraft movements, largely as a result of the robust passenger growth. There were 22,655 take-offs and landings, up 11% over the same month last year.

A new monthly record was achieved with passenger traffic rising by 10.3% to 3.8mn. With more people taking their summer holidays, coupled with increased visitor and transfer traffic especially on Mainland China, Taiwan and Australiasian routes, passenger traffic rose to new heights.

Over a rolling 12-month period, passenger throughput reached 39,586,000. Cargo tonnage and aircraft movements for the past 12 month amounted to 3,270,000 and 250,355 respectively.

The Hong Kong port's container throughput in July totalled 1.92mn TEUs, slightly higher by 2.9% over June’s throughput of 1.91mn TEUs. From January to July this year, 12.6mn TEUs have been handled at the Hong Kong port, at a nearly stagnant 1% growth over the same period in 2004.

Cargo handling at the Kwai Chung-Tsing Yi terminals was 10.5% higher, while container handling at the mid-stream and other berths was 8.4% in Jan-July 2005 over the same period last year.

Meanwhile the Shenzhen container terminals handled 8.8mn TEUs in the Jan-July 2005 period, a growth of 22.3% over the same period last year. For the month of July, 1.4mn TEUs were handled at the Shenzhen ports compared to 1.3mn TEUs handled at the Kwai Chung-Tsing Yi container terminals.