DHL Express said it plans to invest US$100 million to build a new logistics center at Milan Malpensa Airport. SEA Group, the company that operates Milan’s airports, inked a deal for the construction with DHL, according to Varese News.
Work is expected to start by the end of this year, with completion estimated for the first half of 2018. The new hub will occupy 151,000 square feet and will be located within the new Cargo City DHL Express facility, Italy’s main gateway for international goods. An advanced sorting system will enable more efficient handling of goods, tripling the current capacity.
Alberto Nobis, CEO of DHL Express, Italy, said the improvements will make Malpensa a key European hub for DHL, comparable to the hubs in Leipzig, East Midlands and Brussels. “The perspective from which we build this investment will probably accompany us for the next 10 years,” Nobis said, adding that the facility will contain sustainable infrastructure.
Milan Malpensa currently handles 60 percent of Italian freight traffic, and is the leading cargo airport in Italy. In 2015, Malpensa recorded above-average growth rates for European airports in the same category, with a 9 percent increase in freight traffic, compared to the previous year. Malpensa is the sixth largest European airport, after Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, London and Luxembourg. Giulio De Metrio, CEO of SEA, said Malpensa is the “door of the ‘made in Italy’ to the world.” The deal with DHL, he said, is recognition of the more than $100 million in investments that SEA has made in the cargo sector, between 2011 and 2016.