DHL Express will invest several hundred million euros more in its Leipzig hub to increase capacity and speed up handling in the years to come, senior executives said today.
DHL Express Europe CEO John Pearson told international journalists, including CEP-Research, at the facility that the company has so far invested about €510 million in its European air express hub, which opened in 2008.
This includes €300 million for the original 48,000 sqm warehouse facility, which can handle 60,000 parcels and 43,000 documents per hour, and €48 million of subsequent investments in a ULD stacker and ramp upgrading.
Under a further €150 million expansion project which started in early 2014, the physical size of the hub will be doubled with construction of a new 40,000 sqm warehouse alongside the existing one, and automated sorting capacity will be increased by 50% to more than 150,000 shipments per hour. The first stage, for manual handling of large and heavy ‘non-conveyable’ shipments, went into operation last autumn.
Outlining the next operational phases for the ‘Terminal 2’, Roy Hughes, EVP Network Operations & Aviation, told CEP-Research that the next section will be opened in November this year, giving capacity to handle 35,000 – 40,000 more conveyable shipments per hour as well as 6,000 – 6,500 ‘non-conveyables’. A further section will open in the second quarter of 2016, further increasing conveyables’ automatic sorting capacity.
In 2017, DHL Express will then put into operation a pioneering automatic sorting system for non-conveyables weighing up to 170kgs, which will handle about 70% of these volumes at the hub. “This will reduce their average hub handling time from 35 minutes to just 10 minutes,” Hughes explained.
The company will decide shortly which of two leading European suppliers will be contracted to provide this system, expected to cost about €60 – 70 million.
In a further stage, a 12,000 sqm ‘Terminal 3’ will be opened to handle ‘Air Capacity Sales’, taking total warehouse floorspace at the Leipzig hub to 100,000 sqm. This section will handle air freight shipments that ‘fill up’ spare capacity on the express flights.
Overall, Hughes said, DHL Express has committed itself to about €430 million worth of investments at the Leipzig hub over the next two decades, including the current spending on the Terminal 2 and 3 extensions, the non-conveyables sorting system and undisclosed future measures.
This would take DHL’s overall investment at the Leipzig hub to some €730 million.
