Hi-tech traffic reached 3 million tonnes in the first seven months of 2026, overtaking Chinese ecommerce volumes of 2.8 million tonnes over the same period, according to consultancy Aevean. The figures mark a shift in the structure of air cargo demand: data-centre investment, not online retail, now sets the pace of the market.

Aevean's data shows hi-tech air trade grew 22% year on year in the January-to-July window. The wider global air cargo market expanded 5.8% over the same period. Hi-tech traffic is therefore growing at nearly four times the market rate, and it accounts for the largest single share of overall growth.

The driver is the global build-out of data centres. Servers, networking equipment, racks and associated hardware move by air because of their value density and the urgency of capacity commissioning schedules. That demand pattern is reshaping trade flows, Aevean notes, pulling capacity toward hi-tech origin-destination pairs at the expense of other traffic.

The consultancy warns the boom is widening imbalances in the industry's capacity structure. Fast-growing hi-tech flows on specific lanes concentrate demand where freighter and belly capacity is tightest, while weaker lanes see underutilised capacity. For carriers, that means yield strength where hi-tech demand is concentrated and softer economics elsewhere. For forwarders, securing space on hi-tech-heavy routes is becoming the operative constraint.

The numbers also reset the benchmark against which Chinese ecommerce is measured. Ecommerce traffic, the defining growth story of the previous cycle at 2.8 million tonnes, now trails hi-tech by 200,000 tonnes over seven months — a gap that widened as data-centre investment accelerated.

If the 22% growth rate holds, hi-tech will extend its lead through the remainder of 2026, and the capacity imbalances Aevean identifies will shape freighter deployment and pricing decisions into 2027.