Thank you very much, and thank you for having the Halifax International Airport Authority attend this trade committee.
Good morning. My name is Ian Arthur. I am the chief commercial officer at the Halifax International Airport Authority. I'm here today on behalf of the airport authority's president and CEO, Joyce Carter, and our chair of the board, Wadih Fares.
The airport authority is responsible for the management and development of Halifax Stanfield International Airport, one of Atlantic Canada's most critical pieces of transportation infrastructure. It is my responsibility to provide aeronautical and non-aeronautical revenue development for the airport authority.
Halifax International Airport Authority, or HIAA, as we are known, has made significant investments over the past decade to improve its position with regard to passenger and cargo traffic to and from Atlantic Canada. Those investments, including air terminal building expansions and upgrades, state-of-the-art passenger-processing technology improvements, new cargo infrastructure, and a critical extension to our runway, have provided the foundation for the airport's growth and its significant economic impact on the economy, the province, and the region. That impact for 2015 was $2.7 billion.
The importance of international trade is significant to the airport. International trade agreements, such as the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement in effect since early last year, are instrumental in moving Nova Scotia seafood to Asia. Our business arrangement with Korean Air Cargo is a product of that agreement. They have two flights a week, and that's 200 tonnes of fresh, live seafood leaving our airport to Incheon, which is the main airport for Seoul, Korea. We have also signed a sister airport agreement with Incheon, which is the third-largest cargo airport in the world, so we are doing many things to market there and share data with Incheon. It is through Incheon and Korea that Nova Scotia's products get shipped all over Asia.
Agreements such as NAFTA, CETA, and the proposed TPP are of particular interest to HIAA in that they can reduce trade barriers and open doors for Nova Scotia's products around the world. From the airport's perspective, it's the ability to move high-value, time-sensitive products that are best served by air shipment, and this is really what the airport does. It is critical for us to help play a growing part in the economy that's benefiting all of the citizens of Nova Scotia and the region.
From the airport's perspective, I'm confident that I don't have to spend time providing the committee with the details of the current state of the Atlantic Canadian or Nova Scotian economies. I'm not an economist by trade, but we need opportunities to move our natural resources, particularly fresh seafood, to markets around the world quickly and efficiently to obtain the best price in the markets where our products are highly valued. We need to lower or remove barriers to expedite the processes to allow access to these high-value global markets. We need preferential access to the TPP markets. That would be beneficial.
There are many better qualified than I am to provide technical detailed analysis for the potential growth represented by the TPP proposal. That said, I do know this: in 2015, goods valued at $450 million were exported from Halifax International Stanfield Airport. Of that number, $150 million was seafood.
The lobster industry is $2 billion, and 85% of that comes from Nova Scotia. Of that, $1.5 billion goes south of the border by truck. Fifty percent of that is processed, 50% is live seafood, and that seafood is then exported around the world. The time that it takes to get to market and the quality of the seafood at the other end are of concern to the Nova Scotia government.
Lastly, much of that live product is marked as U.S. product. We know that the vast majority of lobster bound for these markets is reconfigured.