DHL Express will expand the size of its East Midlands Airport (EMA) hub, its second-largest inEurope, by 50 per cent and triple sorting capacity with the opening of a £90 million extension in
2016.At present, the 30,000 sqm hub, with some 350 staff, handles about 120,000 packages a nightin a mechanised handling operation.
A new 16,000 sqm building will be added to the current facility and is due to go intooperation in Q4, 2016, while handling will be upgraded to a fully-automated system, DHL Expressexecutives told European journalists, including CEP-Research, on a hub visit.
Roy Hughes, Executive Vice President, Network Operations Europe, said: “We will move awayfrom mechanised to automated handling. It will enable us to treble throughput through the hub.”
Danny Pedri, managing director hubs and gateways for the UK & Nordics, explained: “Wewill go from 15,000 pieces per hour to 44,000 pieces per hour by installing a fully automatedcross-belt sorting system.” This expansion will give DHL sufficient capacity at EMA until 2026,with space available for further expansion after that if necessary.
However, Hughes stressed that the move to fully-automated handling at EMA would not resultin any significant job losses while UK CEO Phil Couchman said DHL would be able to switch peopleinto a trucking depot and a call centre that would be moved to EMA following the expansion.
There are 48 outbound and inbound flights a night at the EMA hub with 24 planes on average.DHL Air operates four B767s from EMA on transatlantic routes to the US air hub at Cincinnati and toLagos in Africa, as well as 22 B757s on European routes, including to the Leipzig hub and variousother sub-hubs and gateways.
Hughes said that after the expansion went into operation DHL initially planned to use largeraircraft on existing routes to and from the EMA hub and would look later at adding more flights toand from the airport.
About 70 per cent of the outbound volumes at the EMA hub arrive by truck from other parts ofthe UK and the remainder on feeder flights. DHL says it can reach 80 per cent of the UK within fourhours by road from the airport, which lies about 60 km north-east of Birmingham in central England.
