UPS is investing $80 million in the expansion of its parcel sorting centre in Herne, Germany, as part of the company’s $2 billion investment in Europe by 2019, of which a large part is planned for Germany, its biggest single market outside the USA.
The $80 million project, which is due to be completed by the end of 2017, will more than double the operating and sorting capacity of the Herne hub, located in North-Rhine Westphalia, with the ground-breaking ceremony taking place yesterday. It is expected to create up to 300 new jobs at the facility.
“This ground-breaking reaffirms UPS’s commitment to businesses of all sizes in the region and our confidence in the German economy,” Frank Sportolari, president of UPS Germany, said. “Herne has been a key location in our network since we opened the original building in 1986, and this investment will support our commitment to reliably and efficiently connect our customers to destinations across Germany, Europe and the world.”
Once the expansion is completed, the Herne facility will have an operating area of 25,000 sqm and feature advanced technology that will increase its parcel sorting capacity to more than 36,000 shipments per hour. Furthermore, the number of loading and unloading bays for containers will almost double to about 130 and the number of parking positions for the delivery trucks will increase to 180. UPS currently employs 1,100 people in its operation in Herne, with the expansion to create up to 300 new jobs at the hub when the new capacity is fully utilised.
Herne’s mayor, Frank Dudda, commented on the UPS investment: “This will create important new jobs for the city and the region. At the same time, the expansion strengthens Herne as a logistics and business location. The strong infrastructure and central location of Herne and the Ruhr area position our city as an ideal logistics site.”
Michael Groschek, Minister of Transport North-Rhine Westphalia, added: “The UPS decision to invest millions in Herne and to create jobs proves that our state is an attractive location for the logistics industry. It is also another great example of the importance of logistics as a growth engine of our country’s economy and its labor market.”
Apart from Herne, UPS also plans to expand its parcel centre in Herford in north-west Germany. It has already invested $40 million to expand its Nuremberg site in south-eastern Germany into a logistics hub serving as a gateway for exports from Germany, Benelux and Scandinavia to various countries in southern and eastern Europe, including Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia as well as Italy and Greece. The expanded facility, with sorting capacity doubled to 30,000 packages an hour, went into service last year.
In March 2014, UPS officially opened a $200 million expansion of its European air hub at Cologne/Bonn airport, which increased sorting capacity by 70% to 190,000 packages per hour.
The company has been active in Germany for forty years and employs more than 18,000 people at 83 facilities.
