IN Brief:
- Combined China and Hong Kong air cargo tonnage to Europe fell 9% month on month and 12% year on year in July.
- Hong Kong-Europe spot rates fell 15% over six weeks, while mainland China-Europe rates declined 29%.
- The EU's temporary €3 customs duty on low-value imported items is already changing e-commerce freight economics.
WorldACD data shows air cargo volumes from mainland China and Hong Kong to Europe weakening for a sixth consecutive week as the market adjusts to the European Union’s new customs duty on low-value e-commerce imports.
Chargeable weight from mainland China to Europe fell 5% week on week in week 31, covering 27 July to 2 August, while Hong Kong-origin traffic fell 3%. Compared with the equivalent week in 2025, volumes were down 7% from mainland China and 24% from Hong Kong.
The monthly picture is more pronounced. Hong Kong-Europe tonnage in July was 19% below June and 24% lower year on year, while mainland China-Europe volumes fell 3% month on month and 6% year on year. Combined China and Hong Kong tonnage to Europe was down 9% from June and 12% from July 2025.
Rates moved in the same direction. Average Hong Kong-Europe spot rates declined from US$5.80 per kg in week 25 to $4.96 per kg in week 31, a 15% reduction. Mainland China-Europe spot rates fell from $5.43 per kg to $3.86 per kg over the same six-week period, a drop of 29%.
The weakening follows a significant customs change. From 1 July, the European Union replaced the customs duty exemption for eligible low-value consignments of up to €150 with a temporary €3 duty per item. The measure is intended to remain in place until July 2028, when the EU expects wider customs reforms for e-commerce to take over.
Hong Kong appears particularly exposed because a substantial share of its Europe-bound airfreight is tied to e-commerce. The charge is applied at item level, altering the economics of low-value direct-to-consumer shipments where transport, fulfilment, and customs costs are already tightly controlled.
The change does not remove Chinese e-commerce from the European market, but it shifts the point at which direct airfreight fulfilment remains attractive compared with alternatives such as bulk importation, European inventory holding, ocean freight, or multimodal transport.
Sellers and logistics providers now have another landed-cost element to absorb, pass on, or reduce through a different fulfilment model. That matters most for low-value goods where a relatively small absolute charge represents a meaningful share of the selling price.
For air cargo operators, the effect is already visible in both demand and price. Falling tonnage reduces pressure on available space, while weaker spot rates indicate that carriers and forwarders are competing harder for freight on lanes that had previously benefited from sustained e-commerce growth.
The correction is not uniform across Asia-Pacific. WorldACD recorded Asia-Pacific-to-Europe spot rates in week 31 at 17% above the comparable period in 2025, down from a 39% year-on-year premium in week 25. Rates from Taiwan, Vietnam, and Thailand remained substantially above last year’s levels.
That divergence matters because it shows the China and Hong Kong decline is being driven by a specific combination of customs rules and traffic mix rather than a broad collapse in Asia-Europe airfreight.
Worldwide air cargo tonnage still increased 5% year on year in July, although growth slowed from 9% in June. Asia-Pacific origin growth eased from 11% to 6%, while European origin growth slowed from 8% to 3% and Middle East and South Asia growth from 12% to 4%.
Fuel and geopolitical disruption continue to keep the wider rate environment elevated. Global average spot rates in July remained substantially above year-earlier levels despite easing from June, reflecting fuel costs, supply-demand imbalance, and network disruption linked to conflict in the Middle East.
Demand for high-value technology freight is also supporting selected lanes. Semiconductors, server equipment, and other infrastructure tied to AI and data-centre investment remain more resistant to modest changes in transport cost than low-value e-commerce parcels.
The result is an increasingly segmented market. Capacity can be tight and expensive on one origin while softening quickly on another, and changes in customs rules can reshape demand faster than aircraft networks can be redesigned.
For shippers, that makes lane-specific information more useful than a global airfreight index. Procurement teams need to examine the actual cargo profile, available capacity, customs treatment, and service requirement rather than assuming one regional trend applies across every Asian origin.
The EU measure also pushes customs compliance further upstream. E-commerce sellers, platforms, consolidators, and logistics providers must account for the charge when calculating landed cost and deciding how goods are grouped, declared, and routed.
Higher administrative complexity can become as important as the €3 duty itself where millions of individual items move through high-volume parcel networks. Data quality, product identification, and customs readiness become part of transport performance rather than separate compliance tasks.
Further requirements are already scheduled, adding another reason for sellers and logistics providers to rethink how low-value goods are moved into Europe.
July’s figures therefore show customs policy translating rapidly into transport demand. China-Europe air cargo remains a major market and global tonnage is still growing, but the six-week decline from China and Hong Kong demonstrates that low-value e-commerce cannot be treated as an unlimited source of premium airfreight volume.
For capacity planners, customs policy has become another demand variable — and one capable of changing a lane before airlines have time to change the network around it.
