We consider heat or mass transport from a circular cylinder under a uniform crossflow at small Reynolds numbers,
\mathrm{Re}\ll 1. This problem has been thwarted in the past by limitations inherent in the classical analyses of the singular flow problem, which have used asymptotic expansions in inverse powers of
\log \mathrm{Re}. We here make use of the hybrid approximation of Kropinski, Ward & Keller [(1995) SIAM J. Appl. Math. 55, 1484], based upon a robust asymptotic expansion in powers of
\mathrm{Re}. In that approximation, the “inner” streamfunction is provided by the product of a pre-factor
S, a slowly varying function of
\mathrm{Re}, with a
\mathrm{Re}-independent “canonical” solution of a simple mathematical form. The pre-factor, in turn, is determined as an implicit function of
\log \mathrm{Re} via asymptotic matching with a numerical solution of the nonlinear single-scaled “outer” problem, where the cylinder appears as a point singularity. We exploit the hybrid approximation to analyse the transport problem in the limit of large Péclet number,
\mathrm{Pe}\gg 1. In that limit, transport is restricted to a narrow boundary layer about the cylinder surface – a province contained within the inner region of the flow problem. With
S appearing as a parameter, a similarity solution is readily constructed for the boundary-layer problem. It provides the Nusselt number as
0.5799(S\,\mathrm{Pe})^{1/3}. This asymptotic prediction is in remarkably close agreement with that of the numerical solution of the exact problem [Dennis, Hudson & Smith (1968) Phys. Fluids 11, 933] even for moderate
\mathrm{Re}-values.