DHL Express Germany has marked the official start of construction for its new Munich Airport facility with a ground-breaking ceremony.
The new building, which is being built on parking lots P 80 and P 80 West, will boast a gross floor area of over 11,000m2. This will make the facility almost seven times larger than the warehouse DHL Express currently rents at Munich Airport's cargo centre. DHL Express will build and operate the new site on land leased from the airport operator, Flughafen München.
The new facility comes in response to growing DHL Express shipment volumes at the Munich gateway. Markus Reckling, managing director of DHL Express Germany, said of the business’s €104m investment, "Our old processing area can’t keep pace with the growth in import and export volumes given current digitalisation and globalisation trends.
‘The new gateway facility at Munich Airport not only represents the next important step in our infrastructure plan but also enables us to prioritise our customers by offering them an improved service."
Once operational, the airside access will enable aircraft parked on the apron to be reached directly from the new building. The gateway also has two PUD fingers (pick-up and delivery), at which up to 65 delivery vehicles can be handled simultaneously. For customers in the Landsberg-Ingolstadt region in particular, this will translate into faster pick-up and delivery times.
In designing the building, DHL Express has placed considerable emphasis on energy-saving materials and technologies such as state-of-the-art LED lighting technology, which will be installed throughout the complex. The facility will be equipped with a photovoltaic system that generates 100 kW peak to power the building’s services, servers, and computers. The building will be heated by heat pumps supplemented by the airport’s district heating system.
There are also plans for 32 e-vehicle charging stations at the PUD fingers, two charging points for apron vehicles, and charging points at the employee parking lots. At the DHL Express facility in the nearby town of Unterschleißheim, 10 e-vehicles are already in operation, with more set to join them soon.
Jost Lammers, CEO of Flughafen München, welcomes the new facility, saying that the ground-breaking ceremony sends an "extremely important signal for the future development of Munich Airport.” He continued, "We see enormous potential in terms of air freight and express services. The strong commitment DHL Express is making represents a sure sign of its confidence in the location. Bavarian businesses will benefit greatly from the gateway, with its highly efficient logistics offerings and wide range of airfreight destinations."
Currently, 72 employees are employed at the Munich gateway. The workforce will double in number, into the new building on completion. Meeting Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) security standards, the facility will also receive TAPA Class A certification, which is globally recognised as the highest airfreight security standard.
The new Munich Airport gateway facility is part of an extensive DHL Express infrastructure improvement programme that aims to increase the number of state-of-the-art shipment processing facilities in Germany – including Dortmund, Neu-Ulm and Bremen.
The gateway's regional service area stretches from Nuremberg in the north to Straubing in the northeast, Bad Aibling in the south and Neu-Ulm in the west. A daily flight also connects Munich to DHL Express’s international hub in Leipzig. Other connections from Munich include East Midlands in the United Kingdom (Monday–Thursday) and Malpensa in Italy (Friday).
