Pigs flown to China in 747 jumbo jets

New Delhi: The novel COVID-19 pandemic has become havoc on the commercial aviation but Alexey Isaykin's cargo carrier has been fully loaded.

Volga-Dnepr Group has travelled more than 3,000 breeding pigs to China from France this year. The animals transported 6,450 miles in wooden crates in the hold of a Boeing 747 cargo plane, are being used to restore local livestock levels to help mitigate shortages in the world's biggest pork market after an outburst of African swine fever decimated China's hog herds.

Stratagems to uproot the spread of the coronavirus amplified those swine shortages and accelerated attempts to boost the population of domestic herds. In the first four months of the year from the U.S., China imported a total of 254,533 tons of pork, which overtook Europe to become China's largest pork supplier.

That's already more than the 245,000 tons China bought for the whole of 2019. Volga-Dnepr's sales rose 32% to $630 million this year through April compared with the same period in 2019. "Global aviation is going through its most challenging time ever, but for cargo carriers like us it's a chance," Isaykin said in a Zoom interview from Moscow.