DHL Express breaks ground for Munich gateway facility

DHL Express Germany marked the official start of construction for its new Munich Airport facility with a groundbreaking ceremony. The building, which is being built on parking lots P 80 and P 80 West, will boast a gross floor area of over 11,000 square meters. This will make the facility almost seven times larger than the warehouse DHL Express currently rents at Munich Airport's cargo center. DHL Express will build and operate the new site on land leased from the airport operator Flughafen München GmbH (Munich Airport).

The new facility comes in response to growing DHL Express shipment volumes at the Munich gateway. Talking about the business’s €104 million investment, Markus Reckling, Managing Director DHL Express Germany, explains "our old processing area can’t keep pace with the growth in import and export volumes given current digitalization and globalization trends. The new gateway facility at Munich Airport not only represents the next important step in our infrastructure plan but also enables us to prioritize our customers by offering them an improved service." Once operational, the airside access allows aircraft parked on the apron to be reached directly from the new building. The gateway also has two so-called 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.

State Minister Dr. Florian Herrmann, Member of the Bavarian Parliament and Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery, commented: "Today is the groundbreaking ceremony for a win-win project: for DHL Express, Munich Airport, for Bavaria and for the people who want to reliably send and receive urgent shipments worldwide. With the new Express Center, DHL is setting standards in logistics and sustainability. Munich Airport is an engine for the region and for Bavaria as a whole." 

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. What is more, the facility will be equipped with a photovoltaic system that generates 100 kWpeak to power the building’s services, servers and computers. Heat pumps, supplemented by the airport’s district heating system, will provide heat to the building. Plans also exist 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 Munich Airport, welcomes the new facility, saying that the groundbreaking ceremony sends an "extremely important signal for the future development of Munich Airport.” Continuing he says: "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. Doubling in number, these will move into the new building on commissioning. Meeting Transported Asset Protection Association (TAPA) security standards, the facility will also receive TAPA Class A certification, which is globally recognized as the highest airfreight security standard.

The new Munich Airport gateway facility is part of an extensive DHL Express infrastructure improvement program that aims to grow the number of state-of-the-art shipment processing facilities in Germany – including Dortmund, Neu-Ulm and Bremen. The Munich 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).