DHL announced this week that it had completed the $160 million sorting automation programme at itsthree main US hubs, increasing shipment capacity across the country by 13%.
The final step in the project was completed at its major East Coast ground hub at Allentown,Pennsylvania, following upgrades at its air and ground hubs at Wilmington, Ohio, and Riverside,California.
New equipment at the Allentown facility – including shoe-sort and tilt-tray systems, loaders,unloaders, singulators, dimensional and image scanners, scan tunnels and video coding – will seeletter-handling capabilities improve by 67% and package throughput by 85%, the company said.
“Our customers are benefiting from the addition of the most technologically-advanced softwareand sort equipment in the industry,” said John Cameron, DHL’s executive vice president ofoperations. “These new automation systems in Allentown add to the flexibility and reliability ofDHL’s entire network.”
The new Allentown hub features a base ‘footprint’ of 290,000 square feet with an additional200,000 square feet of mezzanine work space, and 12,000 square feet of office space. The automationof the hub will benefit customers in Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Washington DC,eastern Pennsylvania and eastern New York. It services 54 pick-up and delivery service depotsthroughout the region and connects with 18 other sort locations.
Meanwhile, DHL has been chosen by Royal China as the exclusive US distributor of Spode, RoyalWorcester and Vista Alegre porcelain.
The carrier will ship from Royal China’s Moorestown, New Jersey, distribution centre toretailers and directly to consumers. Royal China is also using DHL’s international expressservices, for shipping samples to and from vendors in Asia and other offshore locations.
“Our top-to-bottom organisational commitment to service excellence is evidenced by theday-to-day successful delivery of even the most delicate items for customers like Royal China,”said Charles Brewer, DHL’s executive vice president (sales).
DHL has won an award for another specialist shipping service, for temperature-monitoredmedicines tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID).
The award was made by the RFID Journal. DHL was commended for its innovative temperaturemonitoring of drugs during transport, which gave the pharmaceutical industry time to react toin-transport problems, “increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty,” the journal said.
DHL said the pilot project testing the product had proved successful and it would be offeringthe service to the market in the autumn of this year.
