DHL Express has opened a new depot in Vitrolles, close to Marseille, southern France, which itclaims is the company’s third largest facility in the country.
With an area of nearly 3,000 sqm, of which 2,600 sqm are entirely dedicated to parcelhandling, the facility is taking over some sorting activities and distribution of the nearby sitein Marignane, where Marseille Airport is located.
Equipped with advanced technology, this second depot in the Provence region was necessary tomanage 20 per cent growth in regional volumes in 2012 compared to 2011, DHL France explained. Morethan 4,000 parcels equalling over 25 tons of goods are processed daily at the site which rankssixth in France in terms of volumes handled. The facility counts 46 employees and expects furthervolume growth due to the strong volume increase.
Michel Akavi, DHL Express France CEO, said: “We are historic actors in the economy ofMarseille being present for nearly 40 years in the region. After successive re-arrangements at theMarignane site, we opted to transfer parts of our sorting and distribution activities to Vitrollesas we are expanding our air freight operations and customs clearance at the airport. Thisre-organisation improves the service quality for our customers and working comfort for ouremployees. Our depot in Vitrolles benefits from advanced technology optimising parcel handling tosupport our customers in their international development and respond to the growing flows in theProvence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region.”
The new site serves around 7,000 customers, especially in the sectors of aviation andelectronics. The destinations with the strongest export volumes in 2012 were Italy ( 43 per cent),Germany ( 32 per cent), the UK ( 31 per cent) and Algeria ( 5 per cent).
Every day, 48 delivery tours are organised for distribution of 2,700 parcels (representing 20tons of goods) and for export of 1,300 parcels (5 tons). The site has a fully motorised sortingchain which is 170 metres long enabling to handle up to 2,500 parcel per hour. It is equipped withwifi scans to identify parcels in real time in the warehouse and provide instant tracking ofshipments to customers. It also provides a system for loading / unloading directly from trucks tothe sorting chain which strongly reduces the physical handling of parcels and optimises theprocessing time.
Various time savings thanks to the new equipment allow delivery shuttles to depart nearly 25minutes earlier in the morning compared to the previous site and offer later pick-up times tocustomers. In addition, the site carries out many activities to preserve the environment such aswaste sorting or the use of electric forklifts.
The DHL Express site in Vitrolles is part of the extensive DHL Express network in the PACAregion, alongside the facilities in Marignane, Estaque, Nice and Montpellier. This key platformensures regional transits of goods from the four French departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse,Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Hautes-Alpes.
DHL has been operating at Marignane Airport since October 1997. From here internationalimport and export parcels transit to or from the depots at Vitrolles, Montpellier, Nîmes, LaFarlède (close to Toulon) and Fréjus.
The Marignane site is the second hub in France in volume terms behind RoissyCharles-de-Gaulle (sorting platform of goods for the North Africa and Europe regions). The sitelinks the European hub in Leipzig and North Africa as well as Southern Europe. With 900 sqm ofwarehouse space and 300 sqm of office space, the Marignane depot employs 28 staff.
At Marseille, DHL has three flights in the morning, with B757s operating on theBrussels-Marseille-Nice and Leipzig-Marseille-Malta routes and co-loading on a freighter to Tunis.In the evening there is a weekday B757 service to the Leipzig hub.
