When MACL opened Velana International Airport's new cargo terminal in January 2024, it lifted annual handling capacity from 50,000 tonnes to 120,000 — a tripling, in one step, backed by 12,000 square metres of floor space. At the time it looked like decades of headroom.
It isn't. Run the numbers MACL has published since, and the headroom is closer to five years.
The arithmetic
Velana handled 34,500 tonnes in the first half of 2025. In the first quarter of 2026 it handled 24,782 tonnes — up 13 per cent year on year, with transshipment up 14 per cent. Assume the second half of 2025 broadly matched the first, and the airport closed last year somewhere near 69,000 tonnes. That is 58 per cent of the terminal's nameplate capacity, in the facility's second year of operation.
Now hold that 13 per cent growth rate steady and roll it forward:
- 2025 (actual, est. full year) — ~69,000 tonnes — 58% of ceiling
- 2026 — ~78,000 tonnes — 65% of ceiling
- 2028 — ~100,000 tonnes — 83% of ceiling
- 2030 — ~127,000 tonnes — over capacity
Sources: MACL Statistics. Projections are Skylane's, assuming growth holds at 13 per cent.
Two reasons the squeeze arrives earlier than 2030
First, nameplate capacity is not usable capacity. Cargo terminals congest well before they hit their stated ceiling — dwell times stretch, acceptance cut-offs tighten, and build-up space runs short somewhere around 80 to 85 per cent utilisation. On the trend above, Velana reaches that band in 2028, not 2030.
Second, Maldivian cargo is seasonal. Demand tracks the tourism calendar, and the December-to-April high season pulls volumes well above the annual average. An airport running at 85 per cent on an annual basis is running far hotter than that in February. The pinch will show up in a peak week long before it shows up in an annual report.
The 300,000-tonne question
The government is not blind to this. Economic Minister Mohamed Saeed has set out a vision to take Velana's cargo capability to 300,000 tonnes in a further phase of expansion. The ambition is right, and the strategic logic — a tourism-driven widebody network that leaves the country with bellyhold capacity most aspiring hubs would have to buy — is sound.
The issue is timing. Airport cargo infrastructure of that scale takes years to design, finance and build. If the functional ceiling arrives in 2028, the next phase needs to be in construction, not in consultation, well before then. The decision window is not at the end of this decade. It is roughly now.
What it means if you ship through Malé
Nothing changes this quarter. But three things are worth planning around.
Capacity that is comfortable today gets contested in peak season first — so if your volumes are seasonal and time-critical, the value of forward-booked space and firm allocations rises every year from here. Second, the growth is not evenly distributed: transshipment is expanding faster than the total, and sea-to-air, though still small, is compounding quickly. Those are the segments most exposed to a handling constraint, because they need terminal floor and time, not just an aircraft. Third, congestion at a single-airport gateway has no local relief valve. There is no second cargo airport in the central atolls to absorb an overflow.
None of this is a reason for alarm. It is a reason to treat capacity as a resource to be planned for rather than assumed — which, for an island economy with one air gateway, was always the right posture.
