The total value of import and export of cross border e-commerce of Guangzhou's airport port in 2017 exceeded 3.7 billion yuan ($539.76 million), up by 50 percent year-on-year.

According to the latest statistics of the Customs of Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, it has supervised more than 30 million cross-border e-commerce deals worth 4.4 billion yuan in the Jan-July period, witnessing a year-on-year increase of 420 percent and 133 percent respectively.

"With the explosive growth of cross-border e-commerce in China, I am extremely optimistic about the prospects of transforming the passenger traffic to cargo transportation (Passenger-Cargo)," said Norbert Marx, general manager of Guangzhou Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Company Limited (GAMECO).

Earlier in April, the settlement of GAMECO's accessory maintenance base in the zone was put under the media spotlight.

Marx is confident in the maintenance industry in the airport economic zone, adding that aircraft maintenance plays an important role in airport economy.

Not long before the signing of the GEMECO project, Boeing and ST Aerospace also settled their key projects in converting passenger planes into cargo planes in the zone.

As per the data revealed by the administrative committee of Guangzhou Airport Economic Zone, the revenue from aircraft maintenance in 2017 was 3.13 billion yuan, up by 17.7 percent year-on-year. It is more than 1 billion yuan higher compared to the amount in 2014.

In the end of 2017, Beijing International Institute for Urban Development and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative development research base released the first Chinese index for airport economy, putting Guangzhou on third place, following Shanghai and Beijing.

The index offers reference on the agglomeration effect of the airport industry.

At present, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport houses the headquarters of China Southern Airlines, FedEx Asia Pacific Transport Center, 9Air Co, Longhao Airlines and Air China Cargo Airlines. In April, China Eastern Airlines also joined in.

The Airport Economic Area of Guangzhou paid approximately 7 billion yuan in tax in during the period of 2014-2017, seeing an annual average growth rate of 17.8 percent. The main contributing industries were transportation (including warehousing and post), manufacturing and real estate.

A plane flies over the warehouse in the Baiyun Airport Economic Zone.