Emirates Sky Cargo has announced that it is set to start offering dedicated cargo freighter services to Lahore, the second largest city and industrial center in Pakistan and Johannesburg, South Africa's commercial capital.
Both scheduled freighter services will commence from October 1, 2004 and operate weekly.
The Lahore route will be served by a Boeing 747-200F with a payload of 100 tones and the Johannesburg route will be operated by a dedicated Boeing 747-400F with a capacity of 124 tones.
The Dubai-Lahore freighter services offering unbeatable tonnage and volume to the city, will return via Taipei and Dhaka.
Currently, Emirates Sky Cargo offers 100 tones of belly-hold capacity in the Boeing 777 passenger service that serves Lahore four times a week.
According to Emirates, the new service will help fuel industrial production and is ideal for goods that cannot be carried in the belly-hold due to weight, volume or dimensional restrictions.
It will make possible timely supply of capital goods such as oil-well equipment, electronic items and computers machinery for the cottage and textile industries, raw materials for the textile industry and advanced surgical equipment.
Finished products such as textiles, surgical items and general goods from Lahore and other land-locked cities in it vicinity will find new markets in the Far East, Europe and America.
Lahore's growing trade and industry will now have more direct access through Dubai, effectively overcoming the hassles of land transportation of heavy and perishable cargo.