(Yicai Global) June 13 -- What will be the world's fourth and Asia's first professional cargo airport jointly invested by central Hubei province and SF Holding are now under construction in Ezhou, a city near Wuhan, provincial capital.

The Ezhou Airport is scheduled to be completed by 2020 and put into operation in 2021, officials from the provincial government said in a press conference today. The new airport will showcase China's achievements in the global aviation logistics arena, competing with its counterparts.

SF Holding, the operator of China's largest private courier service SF Express, previously said the airport is the core of its ambitious plan to form an air network with global reach.

So far, some 7 km of pioneer roads have been completed, with the cut and fill volume reaching 570 square km. The EPC bidding for lake filling and earthwork will be officially opened at the end of this month, the officials said. The project aims to complete half of the engineering work during the year.

China is the world's largest trading nation and second-largest economy, as well as the second-largest civil aviation country. In 2015, China's express delivery volume leaped to No. 1 in the world. Yet the total number of cargo planes in the Chinese express delivery sector is only 128, less than one-fifth of that of FedEx, an express delivery firm. There is also no professional freight hub airport in China yet.

The demand for a freight hub airport and hub-and-spoke operation mode gradually surfaces within such a context. In June 2013, SF Group planned to build an international logistics hub airport in Hubei as the air transportation hub of SF Express in China. In April 2016, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, CAAC, officially approved the airport site in Ezhou. In February, China's State Council and the Central Military Commission, CMC, approved a proposal to construct a civil airport at Ezhou.

The total investment in the Ezhou Airport project is CNY37.2 billion (USD5.8 billion). The taxiway system will be designed to meet the target of handling 1.5 million passengers and 3.3 million tons of cargo and mail in 2030.

Editor: Mevlut Katik