United Cargo invests $40M in EWR facility

United Cargo invested $40 million into a recently opened cargo facility near Newark Liberty International Airport to accommodate expansion of the carrier’s widebody fleet over the next decade. [caption id="attachment_57142915" align="alignright" width="300"] (Courtesy/United Cargo)[/caption] The 165,000-square-meter facility, which opened April 8, is less than five minutes from the airport (EWR) and features fully electric forklifts, Chris Ward , United Cargo’s senior regional manager of cargo operations for the U.S. East at EWR and Dulles International Airport (IAD), told Air Cargo Next . “Newark is our largest hub,” Ward said. “In fact, it touches almost 30% of United’ s global cargo." United’s cargo throughput at EWR totals 13.6 tonnes of cargo each month, making EWR its busiest cargo facility, Ward said. The new facility will allow United to grow its perishables and pharmaceutical offerings, he added. “We operate currently approximately 50 widebodies a day that reach every continent,” Ward said.“We do anticipate with United Next some significant growth going from 50 widebody aircraft to 100 widebody aircraft. So that was the main business case to obtain a facility that can get us to 2030 and beyond.” United Next is an initiative formed in 2023 to grow United’s fleet and add 800 aircraft by 2032, according to United’s website. EWR ranks No. 39 on Air Cargo Next ’s list of top 50 airports around the globe with throughput of 732,336 tonnes of air cargo in 2022. Facility features In addition to all-electric forklifts, United’s new cargo facility includes: 40 loading dock doors with aluminum grill grates and insulated panel doors; Eight high-speed roll-up doors on weight activation sensors; 38 trailer truck stalls across from the dock for truck staging; 1,008 skids of total pallet storage volume on racking; Eight quad outlets and four duplex outlets in the unit load device (ULD) storage racking; 58 cargo pallets for ULDs; and 48-foot-high ceilings, allowing for racking growth. The facility will also feature: Two coolers (2 degrees C to 8 degrees C) measuring 2,700 square feet each; A temperature-controlled room (15 degrees C to 25 degrees C) measuring 4,500 square feet; Six speed doors with air curtains to maintain the temperature in each room; and Sixteen duplex outlets with 20 amps dedicated to each. New tech United Cargo has contracted with Wyoming-based aviation software company Choice Aviation for its suite of solutions to track, monitor and log shipments digitally, Ward said. With Choice’s technology, United will be able to track “which racks are empty, which ones are full, how long the shipments have been there [and who] their driver [is],” Ward said. “I can see which agent was helping the driver. We’ve only been partners with them for a couple of months now but it’s been a really good change for us.” Because of congestion at EWR, the FAA has limited the airport to 79 operations per hour as of September 2023, according to the FAA website. Developing a facility specific to widebody aircraft with fewer flights helps mitigate this issue while still growing United’s cargo operations, Ward said. “We’re not growing our flight schedule, but we are updating our airplanes,” he said.

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