Following on from a record year in 2017, cargo volumes at Heathrow Airport remained high, with almost 1.7 million tonnes passing through the airport in 2018.

Heathrow handled 1.68 million tonnes of air cargo in 2018, down 0.8% on 2017 but the airport says data was incomplete and missing at the time of publication, and the airport saw an increase of 0.1%.

In December, the airport reported cargo had fallen 7.9% year-on-year to 132,005 tonnes, though due to the missing data, the actual figure was -3.6%.

John Holland-Kaye, CEO of Heathrow Airport says 2018 was an “exceptional year”, helped by parliament voting to support expansion.

He says: “We are on track to deliver an expanded Heathrow in the early years of Brexit, which will keep Britain as one of the world’s great trading nations.”

In 2018, European Union volumes were down 0.8% to 110,790 tonnes while non-EU European cargo was up 5.4% to 57,154 tonnes.

Africa was down 3.1% to 88,669 tonnes, while North America, the busiest trade lane declined 1.4% to 606,887 tonnes.

Latin America had the strongest growth, up 10.6% to 52,386 tonnes while the Middle East was down 4.5% to 256,485 tonnes and Asia Pacific up by 0.7% to 511,849 tonnes.