UPS flies high with bespoke offerings
Being known as the centerpiece of European express network and one of the most advanced sorting facilities in the world, UPS has more to offer, shares Martina Biron-Karp, Tour Guide, UPS Welcome Center Cologne/Bonn Airport.
How does the Cologne/Bonn facility serves as an international logistics hub for both major multi-nationals and SMEs in Europe?
The state-of-theart facility features approximately 105,000 square meters (1,130,000 square feet) of operating area and has a package sorting capacity of 190,000 packages per hour - or around 53 packages per second. Automated technology ensures the hub’s efficiency and processing reliability. The conveyor system covers a distance of about 40 kilometers (24 miles), with a package taking an average of just 15 minutes to move through the hub from unload to load point. The hub helps UPS customers to successfully compete and do business on the important trading lanes within Europe and linking Europe to North America and Asia in an era when free trade agreements on the horizon promise growth for business of any size.
Why UPS has chosen Cologne/Bonn for its European air hub?
On account of its excellent location at the heart of Europe’s most productive economic region, the area has well developed road network and infrastructure, the good local weather conditions for year-round flight operations, the airport’s excellent runway system and its proximity to a skilled and flexible workforce.
These conditions have not changed since the hub’s inception in 1986 as it remains the main European gateway in an international network that includes the UPS Worldport in Louisville, Kentucky, and Asian hubs in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. UPS have expanded the air hub facilities twice in 2006 and 2014, investing US$335 million in the last decade. The latest expansion in 2014 constitutes UPS’s largest facility investment outside the United States in the company’s history.
Please enlighten UPS European air hub features.
Each night, 41 flights arrive and depart the European Hub, linking Europe with the Americas, Asia and other European destinations in a matter of hours. The facility has three independent sorting systems, one for each regular packages, ‘small’ (envelopes) and ‘irregulars’ (odd shaped/heavy) shipments. Automated technology ensures the hub’s efficiency and processing reliability, which can currently sort 190,000 packages per hour (or more than 53 packages per second) with a possibility to expand sorting capacity to 165,000 packages per hour in the future.
Using a bespoke scanning and sorting system, 40 km of conveyer belts sort the packages by size and destination using bar code information displayed on each way bill to send them automatically towards the correct bagging or collection point.