Massive consignments of Apple products were flown out of Chennai airport in the past few months

Chennai airport witnessed a massive export of Apple products in the last four months. 

Sources said, between January and the first week of April, 30 freighters carrying large volumes of shipments of Apple products flew out of Chennai city to the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Particularly, in March alone, 14 freighters were sent out of Chennai, carrying a total of 1,000 tonnes in terms of shipment, that were headed to the U.S. and Hong Kong. In the past week, already, four freighters have headed out to US. “Since Indian exports to the US will have a 26% tariffs and we are not sure how many shipments will start coming in henceforth. We have to wait and see if this trend will continue,” a source said.

Sanyam Chaurasia, senior analyst, Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm said the market expects that there will be an increase in shipments from India to US for the non-PRO variants, entry level iPhones or the legacy iPhones. “There will be a potential increase in the shipment of these models. India has a competitive advantage when compared to China and Vietnam. In the U.S., iPhones feature in top spots in the list of goods being exported from India. Production facilities here are getting matured to cater to markets like the US. As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, since there is a very large presence of the Apple suppliers here, the State definitely has an edge over the others,” he said.

As per a PIB release from January this year, Tamil Nadu contributes around 30% of India’s electronics exports, underscoring its pivotal role in the sector. The State has also started manufacturing the latest iPhone - 16 Pro.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) carried out quite a lot of upgradation work last year to facilitate the smooth movement of cargo in and out of the airport. A special corridor was also created for quick movement of Apple products. “Once the shipment reaches the entry point of the cargo facility, it is swiftly offloaded, cleared by customs, scanned and then subsequently sent to the aircraft,” a source said.