Prestwick Airport: Import hub for Chinese e-commerce and export gateway for Scottish salmon and whisky

Glasgow-Prestwick Airport’s (PIK) meteoric rise as an import hub for Chinese e-commerce goods went into overdrive this year.

In May, China Southern began scheduled cargo flights to the airport from Guangzhou with  four flights a week initially and plans to increase the schedule to a daily service.

In June, Air China Cargo launched a scheduled freighter service from Guangzhou, initially with four flights per week, but which has since been increased to eight, with Chengdu added.

In October, Beijing Capital Airlines launched a four-times weekly freighter schedule from Zhengzhou to Prestwick.

Cargo volumes are set to treble in 2025/26 with the airport currently handling 21 wide-bodied freighters a week and more than 3,800 tonnes of cargo a month, PIK’s CEO, Ian Forgie, noted.

Two of the world’s largest freighter operators, Cargolux and Air France, also operate to PIK.

Outbound Cargo Gathers Momentum

While the surge in China-Prestwick air cargo services has captured the headlines – a direct response to growing demand in the UK for goods from e-commerce platforms Temu, Shein, TikTok, and Alibaba- the airport’s strategy to develop outbound or return leg volumes to China is also gathering momentum.

PIK’s Business Development Director, Nico Le Roux, explained that PIK's majority outbound cargo is Scottish salmon – the biggest food export out of the UK – with volumes estimated at around 8,000 tonnes annually. “This is an exciting new development for salmon shippers to have capacity out of Scotland directly to the Far East,” he said.

Scottish salmon exports by value reached £76 million in 2024, marking a 60% increase compared to the previous year.

PIK’s proximity to the fish farms provides seafood producers with value-added services, including an 18-hour shelf-life extension by reducing farm-to-flight transit times, lower trucking costs, and important reductions in CO2 emissions.

In September, PIK launched a Scotland-to-China seafood export service following a £1m investment in new equipment and the creation of a dedicated cool chain team.

The airport has invested in high-volume metal detectors, temperature exposure and tracking systems, and four chillers (87 tonne capacity) in a dedicated facility to handle seafood exports to China and mainland Europe.

Scottish whisky is another niche market Prestwick is targeting. “Even though most of it is moved by ocean, we believe that high-end whiskies will be commercially viable to fly from Scotland to China,” Le Roux observed.

Owned by the Scottish government and for many years a loss-making enterprise, Prestwick is now generating an operating profit - £3.5m for the financial year to 31 March 2025, up from £300,000 for the previous 12 months. In the current financial year, PIK has already reached its annual operating target in the first six months to September 2025.

Out-Of-Gauge Cargo Expertise

E-commerce and Scottish salmon and whisky exports aside, the former World War II training base for the RAF also has long-established expertise in handling outside cargo.

“We go back 30 years and are probably the most experienced handlers of out-of-gauge cargo in the UK. We regularly handle oil well equipment for the North Sea production lines. We've handled Antonov 225s when they were flying. We see big, heavyweight traffic on a weekly basis and aerospace traffic too, with the big aircraft engines, the GenXs, which weigh 13 tonnes-plus. We also have abundant space available to handle these out-of-gauge shipments, and having invested in new equipment, it's a pretty easy handling operation for us.”

Le Roux also commented on Prestwick’s place in the UK air cargo landscape today. “We're becoming more and more relevant to the market as historically we were seen as being too far north to be competitive with the southern UK airports. But due to congestion – not just at the airports themselves but in the areas around them – more and more operators are seeing Prestwick as a viable alternative to these busy airports for cargo.”