Cobalt (Larnaca) has secured an unspecified amount of capital from an undisclosed Hong Kong-based investor airline chairman Gregory Diacou has said.

“This broadens our investor base to include both Cypriot and Chinese capital and is a major boost to our plan to launch operations this year as Cyprus’ new flag carrier,” he told the Cyprus Business Mail earlier this week.

Leveraging the geographical location of its Larnaca hub, Cobalt plans to launch budget operations later this spring using a pair of A320-200s. Initial destinations will reportedly cover Western Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Africa with long haul operations to China, South Africa and the United States to follow in 2017.

Following the collapse of Cyprus Airways (1947) (Larnaca) early last year, a number of airlines have stepped forward to try and fill the void. While Ryanair (FR, Dublin International) has come and gone, it has now emerged that Russia's S7 Group, parent firm to S7 Airlines (S7, Novosibirsk) and Globus (Novosibirsk), has also expressed an interest in securing a local Cypriot AOC.

"S7 Group is looking at the possibility of participating in a Cyprus airline," company spokeswoman Anna Bazhina told Bloomberg news earlier this month.