DHL reveals its emission-free air hub
DHL Express presented its new Strategy 2025 at the opening of its EUR 123 million state-of-the art hub at Cologne-Bonn Airport. The air hub has undergone a two-year building and renovation project.
By investing more than EUR 1 billion annually in technology and infrastructure and by putting the new green logistics centre into operation, DHL clearly demonstrates its ambitions. An ice energy storage system with over 1.3 million litres holding capacity and 18 kilometres of piping ensures the hub stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. This system in combination with a heat pump and solar panels on the roof makes this an entirely emissions free solution.
“Since its founding 50 years ago, DHL has time and again made its mark with innovative solutions and powered the rapid evolution of the Express industry as a whole. The many new technologies at our Cologne hub are just one more example of this, and it shows the basis of our new Strategy 2025 as well,” explains John Pearson, CEO DHL Express.
“As the experts in export and import, we can only grow by ensuring top quality, which is why we invest more than a billion euros each year in employee training, infrastructure, and digitalisation. The main goal here is to increase our transport and delivery capacity for time-sensitive TDI shipments to meet the ever-growing customer demand in the area of e-commerce. At the same time, we’re continuously improving on process efficiency. Our recently published quarterly results show pretty clearly that we’re on the right track.”
DHL completed the upgrade of its air hub at Cologne-Bonn Airport in August 2019 following a two-year building and renovation phase. In the hub’s 15,000 m² sorting center, with its 12,000 m² warehouse and 3,000 m² office space, several new technologies allow DHL Express to process up to 20,000 shipments per hour on its 2.5-kilometer-long conveyor belt. A number of other additions, including 3D scanners and vacuum lifters, help make life easier for the hub’s 340 employees, who hail from 34 different countries.
“The EUR 123 million investment in our new hub clearly shows our commitment to the Cologne-Bonn region and ensures the future of a lot of jobs here,” says Detlef Schmitz, Managing Director of the DHL Express hub. “This also makes the hub an even more important part of DHL’s international network. With the new direct route between Hong Kong and Cologne, 28 daily flight movements, and our use of state-of-the-art technologies, we are proud to be contributing – sustainably – to the worldwide growth of DHL Express.”
“We expect continued growth in the coming years, especially in cross-border e-commerce trade,” says Travis Cobb, EVP DHL Global Network Operations. “By modernising our air fleet, we can increase our intercontinental connections and do so with reduced carbon emissions and less fuel consumption. Next year, we will deploy another six brand-new planes from our Boeing order.”
