EXPRESS delivery provider DHL Express took the opportunity of the opening of its €123m state-of-the-art hub at Cologne-Bonn Aiport, to launch its Strategy 2025.
DHL Express transports over 400 million shipments per year from 22 hubs worldwide via 260 dedicated aircraft, 17 partner airlines, and has a capacity for more than 3000 flights daily to more than 500 airports.
Digitalisation, e-commerce and sustainability are at the core of the company’s journey to further improve growth. By investing more than €1bn annually in technology and infrastructure and by putting the new ‘green’ logistics center into operation, DHL clearly demonstrates its ambitions.
An ice energy storage system with over 1.3m litres holding capacity and 18 kilometres of piping ensures the hub stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. This system in combination with a heat pump and solar panels on the roof makes this an entirely emissions free solution.
“Since its founding 50 years ago, DHL has time and again made its mark with innovative solutions and powered the rapid evolution of the express industry as a whole. The many new technologies at our Cologne hub are just one more example of this, and it shows the basis of our new Strategy 2025 as well,” John Pearson, CEO DHL Express, said.
“As the experts in export and import, we can only grow by ensuring top quality, which is why we invest more than a billion euros each year in employee training, infrastructure, and digitalisation.
“The main goal here is to increase our transport and delivery capacity for time-sensitive TDI shipments to meet the ever-growing customer demand in the area of e-commerce,” Mr Pearson said.
DHL completed the upgrade of its air hub at Cologne-Bonn Airport in August 2019 following a two-year building and renovation phase. In the hub’s 15,000-square-metre sorting centre, with its 12,000-square-metre warehouse and 3,000-square-metre office space, several new technologies allow DHL Express to process up to 20,000 shipments per hour on its 2.5-kilometre conveyor belt. A number of other additions, including 3D scanners and vacuum lifters, help make life easier for the hub’s 340 employees, who hail from 34 different countries.
