Booming Munich plans more facilities
Munich Airport is embarking on a major expansion of its handling capacity in order to cope with explosive cargo growth.
In 2004, the airport saw a 25.6 percent growth in throughput in its cargo facilities to 309,828 tonnes. 170,828 tonnes of that was flown air freight, which grew 21.5 percent, while trucked airfreight leapt 21.1 percent to 139,000 tonnes.
One immediate project to accommodate the growth is the building of a 4,400 square metre express centre on the end of the current 53,000 square metre cargo centre, which is operated by Cargogate, the handling company which is 100 percent owned by Munich Airport.
The express centre will bring together DHL, FedEx and UPS, who will each have their own areas within the facility. The fourth integrator at Munich, TNT, which moved on-airport only in the fourth quarter of 2004, will continue to be housed in another part of the Cargogate facility.
The new facility is needed, says Andreas Bergmann, Munich’s manager cargo marketing, to accommodate strong growth by the integrators.
DHL currently operates to the airport with an A300, FedEx with an A310, and UPS with a B727, while TNT flies BAe-146.
However, even once the express centre is open in September, Munich will still need further cargo handling capacity. The existing cargo centre was designed to handle 270,000 tonnes, a figure already surpassed by the airport, and Bergmann confirms that the airport is already in a “pre-planning” stage for new cargo facilities.
Since the express centre will use up the last of the space available for expanding the current freight terminal, which consists of a single line of airside facilities, any expansion will have to be on a new site. The most likely is a space parallel to the existing terminal on the landside, where there is space for a facility which would have the same capacity as the current cargo centre. Plans are also being mooted for a perishables centre, and an expansion from the current seven B747F parking positions to 17.
However, Bergmann stresses that no firm decisions have been taken on any new terminal, though he is pretty confident it will go ahead. “We are still talking to various logistics players to get their input and ask how much space they might need,” he says.
Munich’s huge cargo growth in 2004 was in part due to new freighter routes. Cathay Pacific launched three B747 freighters a week from Hong Kong on 15 August in cooperation with Lufthansa Cargo, and shortly afterwards Emirates started a new weekly freighter route from Emirates, which serves Munich en route to New York.
But it was belly cargo that really took off for the airport in 2004. Lufthansa continued to add flights to Asia and the US as it built up Munich as a second intercontinental hub: Charlotte, Vancouver, Beijing, Teheran, Hong Kong and Shanghai via Guangzhou were all added in the summer schedule. Meanwhile Etihad and Air China both started thrice weekly passenger flights. Munich now boasts 16 weekly services to China, 25 to the Gulf, and 15 to the US. - Peter Conway
oder :'( ?
