SriLankan Cargo, will launch a freighter service to the South Indian industrial city of Coimbatore on the 27th of April, yet another step in its strategy of linking major industrial cities in the region to Colombo and beyond.

The twice-weekly service will operate on Wednesday and Saturday with the airline's two AN12F aircrafts, which each has a capacity of 17 metric tonnes of cargo in Pallets.

SriLankan Cargo already operates regular freighter services to Chennai ( Madras ), Bangalore , Trivandrum , and Male. This is in addition to SriLankan Airlines' regular flights servicing 70 times weekly to 10 cities in India .

“Our new service to Coimbatore will enhance our strategic objective to connect major industrial centres throughout the Subcontinent with Colombo , which is the Hub in the Ocean,” said Nalin Rodrigo, Head of Cargo at SriLankan. “Our freighter is a ‘flying truck' that serves many industries by carrying cargo rapidly and efficiently.”

This is the only freighter service operating to and from Coimbatore , and is expected to provide a significant boost to the city's industrial progress. Coimbatore airport also serves the nearby industrial and agricultural towns of Karur, Erode, Tirupur, Salem, Coonoor, and Ooty.

Coimbatore is a highly industrialized area and is the second largest city located at the western end of the state of Tamil Nadu. Among the industries located here are textiles, software, machine tools, water pumps, metallurgy, textile machinery, farm equipment, jewellery, home appliances, and auto components. Together with the nearby town of Tirupur, Coimbatore boasts of the largest concentration of textile activity in the world, and 85% of textile machinery manufactured in India is from this area.

In addition to the industrial sector, the area also produces a large number of crops including paddy, sugarcane, cotton, ground nuts, maize, tobacco, turmeric, onion, chillies, vegetables, banana, coconut, arecanut, and flowers.

SriLankan is by far the largest foreign carrier operating into India . The airline has positioned Colombo as the gateway to India , and is increasing its services by the end of 2005 to 84 flights to 10 Indian cities – New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Madras, Trichy, Trivandrum, Calicut, Kochi, and Bodh Gaya – most of them with daily or more frequencies or more.

SriLankan Cargo will double its handling capacity at Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport in late 2005 in order to cater to ever-increasing operations in the Subcontinent.

For more information on SriLankan Cargo, visit www.srilankancargo.aero

Media Relations Section
Corporate Communications Division
SriLankan Airlines

April 25th, 2005