FedEx is aiming for strong growth in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe through its new €140million hub at Cologne/Bonn airport, executives said at the official inauguration today.
The integrator is now operating 52 weekly flights through the hub, which has capacity to sort upto 18,000 parcels and documents an hour. The automated sorting facility, which replaced a smallerbase at Frankfurt airport, went into operation in June. It was officially inaugurated today byGerald P. Leary, President, FedEx Express Europe, Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa andCologne airport chief Michael Garvens who pushed the button to set the automated sorting system inmotion.
The hub, in which FedEx and the airport authority each invested €70 million, covers a total of51,000 sqm, including a 38,000 sqm sorting area. Parcels are automatically sorted and take at most4.5 minutes to pass through the system. A total of 450 FedEx employees work at the facility out ofthe 1,600 total employed in Germany. Rooftop solar panels covering 16,000 sqm, the largest suchFedEx solar system worldwide, generate 800 Kwh a year, which would be sufficient to power 230households.
“The Cologne hub will play a pivotal role in FedEx’s strategy of strengthening and expanding itsmarket position in Europe,” Leary commented. “Our new hub is testament to FedEx’s belief in theeconomic potential of the German marketplace and its ability to catalyse growth in Central andEastern Europe.”
Addressing a press conference, Leary described Germany as “the driving engine of FedEx’s growthin Europe” thanks to the country’s strong exports growth. “Cologne is an investment for the nextdecade. We see significant growth in Central and Eastern Europe in the future,” he added. BernardSchloemer, Managing Director Operations, Central & Eastern Europe, declined to disclose thecompany’s German market share but added: “We are very satisfied with our development in Germany.Cologne will support this future development.”
One of FedEx’s six daily US-Europe flights, operated by a 75-tonne capacity MD-11, currentlyserves Cologne directly, while the company is considering adding a fourth daily flight from Asia toEurope that could serve Cologne, Leary said. Most of FedEx’s intercontinental flights to Europeoperate to its air hub at Paris CDG. The bulk of its flights at Cologne are intra-European flightsoperated by A310Fs, with 36 tonnes capacity, or smaller ATR cargo planes. Cologne acts as a centralgateway for packages arriving by ground or air from Central and Eastern Europe providing fastconnectivity within Europe, to the USA and Asia.
In future, FedEx would operate intercontinental flights with its new, fuel-efficient and quieterB777 freighters, Leary added but he could not say when these planes might serve Cologne. FedExoperates 21 of its 52 weekly flights at Cologne between 22:00 and 06:00 but only six of theseoperate during the “core night hours” of 24:00-05:00, Schloemer pointed out. This means that thecompany only accounted for 3% of night flights at the airport, he noted.
Cologne airport chief Michael Garvens stressed that the airport had a night operations licencevalid until 2030. Asked about the plan of the new North Rhine Westphalia state government to imposea night flight ban at the airport, he stressed that this would only have affected passenger flightsand not express cargo flights. “We expect that this (night flight) approval not only for expresscargo but also for passenger flights is legally secure until 2030,” he emphasised.
Cologne/Bonn, Germany’s second-largest cargo airport, expected volumes to grow 14% to 640,000tonnes this year following the arrival of FedEx, with further strong growth next year, Garvensadded. Describing the FedEx hub relocation as “a milestone”, he stressed that Cologne’s long-termtarget is to regain its position as Europe’s largest express cargo airport which it lost toLeipzig.
Outlining the reasons for relocating the Central and Eastern Europe hub from Frankfurt toCologne, the FedEx executives praised Cologne’s strategic location at the heart of North RhineWestphalia, Germany’s top export region. About 40% of European GDP is generated within a 500kmradius of the airport, while 70% of European distribution centres lie within 200km.
