DHL Express plans to invest up to €125 million in new hubs at Paris and Lyon airports to increase capacity to cope with rising volumes.
French daily Le Figaro reported that DHL Express CEO Ken Allen officially presented the plans yesterday at a meeting of the French ‘strategic attractiveness council’ at the Elysée palace, which was headed by President François Hollande and attended by senior ministers. The investment plan was also reported by the AFP news agency.
Confirming the reports, a DHL Express spokesman told CEP-Research today that the company plans to invest €85 million (capital expenditure) through to 2020 in an automated sorting centre at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris which “could increase up to 20,000 sqm (although this is still a projection)”.
The new facility would be up to four times bigger than DHL's existing 5,000 sqm depot near the airport which it only opened in early 2015.
Michel Akavi, DHL Express France CEO, had told the AFP news agency: "We will invest in a new fully automated sorting centre at Charles de Gaulle to cope with the increase in our order volumes.
“We have recorded 14-15% annual growth in inbound and outbound parcels for the last three years. We don’t have enough space while we have to deliver increasingly early and there are more and more traffic jams,” he explained.
At the new facility, parcels will be routed directly on to conveyor belts from the cargo hold of the freighters and then from the belts on to trucks for delivery to the metropolitan area of Paris.
Apart from the investment at Charles de Gaulle Airport, DHL is also currently in talks with the airport of Lyon to build a new sorting centre, Akavi indicated. The area of the future facility is projected at 15,000-17,000 sqm, with planned investment of €40 million (capital expenditure) through to 2020, the DHL spokesman confirmed to CEP-Research.
These major investments follow DHL Express France’s ongoing €30 million investment programme as part of which it is modernising 17 of its 40 depots, including with new technologies and delivery fleet expansion, in response to growing parcel volumes.
