Air Charter Service (ACS) announced that it has arranged more than 65 charter flights carrying 3,000 tonnes from China to Australia over the past six weeks.

It said each flight had more than one million Covid test kits onboard which are provided for free to all Australian households.

Demand "high" for air charter

ACS said demand in the country has been "extremely high."

"This prompted a requirement of a series of charter flights to speed up the supply chain," the air charter operator said in a statement.

ACS noted that it arranged flights from several airports in China, where the kits are manufactured, with the majority flying out from Shenzhen.

Due to the shortage of freighter capacity around the world, ACS sourced passenger aircraft that had all the seats removed, allowing a higher volume and payloads of up to 50 tonnes on some of the flights.

The charters were managed by ACS' Australian and Singapore cargo teams utilising Airbus A330-200s, A330-300s, and A340-300s.

"With so many charters in such a short timeframe, it was essential that every flight stuck to its schedule. We are proud to be able to help rapidly transport these test kits from China here to Perth and other parts of the country, to help to get them distributed across Australia," said Jason Bird, assistant director & head of cargo at Air Charter Service Singapore.

ACS noted that due to the majority of test kits being manufactured in Asia, its offices across the Asia Pacific region have been instrumental in transporting billions of test kits over the past two years to countries around the world.