Central Asia requires roughly $33 billion in annual infrastructure investment to support the air cargo demand generated by its mining, energy and manufacturing boom, Chapman Freeborn vice president Gerhard Coetzee told the Central Asia Air Cargo Summit. Commerce along the so-called Middle Corridor is projected to triple by 2030, he said, but the region's airlines and airports are not yet configured for the shipments that growth will produce.

Coetzee, who oversees cargo for India, the Middle East and Africa at the UK-headquartered charter broker, framed the gap in operational terms. "A scheduled service can suit standard freight well," he said, "yet a heavy industrial component headed to a remote location under a project deadline generates an entirely different set of requirements."

Why do project cargo needs outpace scheduled networks?

Freight demand in Central Asia increasingly originates inside the region rather than simply transiting it, Coetzee said. Mining, energy, infrastructure and manufacturing each generate distinct cargo categories — heavy, oversized, time-sensitive and project-related — that do not always fit the bellies or schedules of passenger and combination carriers.

He pointed to specific equipment: 70-tonne transformers and 16-metre pipes. A widebody might offer enough payload for such loads, but route availability, slot timing and ground handling at the destination may rule out the operation entirely.

Which routes and aircraft types are constrained?

Connectivity into and out of Central Asia is improving, Coetzee said. China has expanded links to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and scheduled services toward Europe are taking shape. Still, "the appropriate kind of capacity is not always on offer," he noted.

Larger freighters face the tightest squeeze. Coetzee named the Boeing 747, Boeing 777 and Antonov An-124 as aircraft types whose operations depend on airport-specific infrastructure: loading equipment, runway length and weight-bearing capacity, plus specialised handling for outsize items. Where any of those elements is missing, the charter falls through.

Permits and regulatory clearances add another layer, he said, and winter weather — particularly de-icing cycles — directly affects both scheduling reliability and operating cost.

What is driving the surge?

The $33bn annual infrastructure figure underlines how much physical build-out the region has committed to. Coetzee tied this to the same industries pulling for air cargo: mining, energy and a manufacturing base that is widening beyond extractive exports.

Diversion away from the Middle East has amplified the trend. Cargo carriers have looked for alternatives as conflicts in the Middle East continue to disrupt traditional routings, and Chinese e-commerce platforms have begun using Central Asian territory to move certain shipments toward the United States, sources told Air Cargo News.

What does the right capacity actually look like?

For Chapman Freeborn, the opportunity sits in the gap between scheduled network design and project logistics. An air cargo network already exists across the region, Coetzee said, but it is not necessarily built around the freight these emerging industries produce. That mismatch is what charters are meant to close — provided the right aircraft, the right airport and the right timing can be aligned.

As Central Asia integrates further into global supply chains, Coetzee concluded, "the difficulty will not merely be how much air cargo capacity the region holds, but whether businesses can obtain the right capacity, in the right location and at the moment their project calls for it." Whether airports, regulators and charter operators can synchronise around those project deadlines will determine how much of the projected tripling of Middle Corridor commerce reaches an aircraft.