Wellcamp Airport; A REGIONAL airport built on an old cow paddock by one of Queensland’s wealthiest families reached another milestone yesterday when it announced its first passenger flight to China.
Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport, located on the outskirts of Toowoomba, is set to reveal the landmark journey to Shanghai in a bid to draw closer trade ties with the Asian powerhouse.
The Qantas charter flight, which is expected to take off in October this year, will be carrying an Australian delegation of business people and industry leaders as part of a push to develop stronger trade links with the manufacturing giant.
Toowoomba Surat Basin Enterprise CEO Dr Ben Lyons, who has helped spearhead the initiative, has been integral in leading the charge to attract Chinese business back to the Darling Downs region.
“We are in the heart of one of the world’s best food producing and value-adding regions and businesses and investors in China want to meet us,” Dr Lyons said.
“It’s not just about beef or infant formula, whilst China consumes across all commodity groups I would encourage people in the services sector be it health, education, construction, tourism, finance and investment to carefully look at this flight as an opportunity to investigate what those opportunities are.
“We can sit back here and wait for the Chinese opportunities to come, but I think there is much more to be said about being proactive about the China opportunity, and the Access China delegation is a big part of this.”
Wellcamp Airport, which is owned and operated by the well-known Wagner family, has already branched into the domestic market since opening in 2014, with return routes available to Cairns and Melbourne through Airnorth, which uses a code sharing agreement with Qantas.
The China charter flight comes on the back of a Boeing 747-8 freighter departing from the airport in November last year carrying tonnes of mangoes, pecans, lettuce and beef to Hong Kong.
Wagner’s Global chairman John Wagner said any company considering doing business with China should be part of the delegation.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to network with like-minded people who deal regularly with China.
Story sourced from here
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