DHL: big relocation
Within three days the newly relocated DHL changed the volume statistics at Bratislava airport. Within 72 hours this international air express transportation company delivered to and from the airport more goods than had been transported via the airport in three months.
Everything changed on March 31. As of this day DHL flights fly from Bratislava rather than Vienna. This change was a part of another major change regarding DHL air logistics in Europe.
Its transloading and sorting hub at Brussels airport was overloaded and could not expand anymore. Therefore Deutsche Post World Net, the owner of DHL made a radical decision in 2004.
In spite of trade unions’ objections, a strike and political pressure in Brussels it found a greenfield site close to Leipzig airport and invested 300 mil. EUR in a new European hub.
It built a 400-metre warehouse with a fully automated sorting line that can handle 100-thousand packages and letters within an hour as well as a terminal for 60 aircraft, a hangar, fuel tanks, parking for trucks for deliveries to Germany and neighbouring countries, a railway terminal and offices.
Last October the company launched a trial operation at the new premises and from the beginning of April the new hub was put into full operation. The Brussels hub was reduced to a regional transloading centre for Benelux countries during the evening of March 31 and the morning of April 1. Belgian European Air Transport that lives from contact with DHL has moved most of its 25 big freight aircrafts Airbus A300F and Boeing 757-200F to Leipzig.
Within a few hours, shortly before midnight the destination for 60 aircraft of this company and of other companies working for DHL from all over Europe and from overseas was no longer Brussels, but Leipzig – in addition to hundreds of trucks.
These are unloaded quickly, sorted and within a few hours the deliveries are sent on to their destinations by plane or truck. And this is repeated each night: two thousand tons of freight. One of the planes delivers the freight for Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic at five o’clock in the morning. But it no longer lands in Vienna but in Bratislava.
