Freight volumes at Germnay’s Leipzig/Halle Airport (LEJ) set a new record in October, increasing by 10.9% over 2019 to 124,881 tonnes.
Europe’s fifth-largest cargo airport also saw the number of cargo flights increase 8.7% to 4,501 compared with October in the previous year.
Air cargo volumes at LEJ grew by 8.4% to more than 1.11m tonnes during the first ten months of 2020. As a result, air cargo volumes at Leipzig/Halle are growing far above the average figures and in contrast to the negative trend elsewhere in Germany.
Amazon Air
Amazon Air opened its first regional air cargo centre in Europe at Leipzig/Halle at the beginning of November. The company is using a newly constructed freight facility measuring 20,000 square metres with direct access to the apron area.
Prepared to handle vaccines
Leipzig/Halle offers its customers CEIV Pharma certification. The airport is able to handle temperature- and time-critical pharmaceutical shipments like vaccines round the clock.
PortGround is a subsidiary of Mitteldeutsche Flughafen specialising in handling aircraft and cargo. The airport’s refrigerated warehouse is located in the World Cargo Center (WCC). It has direct access to the apron area with short transport routes and stable refrigerated chains to and from aircraft and trucks.
DHL hub
DHL Express operates a hub at Leipzig/Halle. with up to 2,000 tonnes of goods are handled every day. Leipzig/Halle is also the home base airport for AeroLogic, a joint venture involving DHL Express and Lufthansa Cargo.
The airport launched a revised planning procedure involving funds worth about €300m this year. The airport submitted the documents necessary for this to the Saxony planning authority in August.
These plans envisage enlarging the apron areas in the DHL hub zone in order to create additional parking spaces for aircraft.
Cargo-friendly airport
With as many as 1,000 cargo flights a week, the airport also offers multimodal transport connections.
Leipzig/Halle has direct links to the trans-European motorway and railway networks in both a north-south and east-west direction. Among other things, this enables trucks to reach 15 European countries within eight hours.
The airport handles the complete portfolio of products along supply chains for freight forwarders, charter brokers and airlines 24/7. All kinds of air cargo and freight planes can be handled 365 days a year round the clock.
This not only includes general and outsize cargo, but also pharmaceuticals and e-commerce shipments as well as large live animals and consignments of hazardous goods.
Overall, about 60 cargo airlines fly to the airport and serve a network of routes that involves more than 280 destinations around the world. Freight volumes at Leipzig/Halle Airport amounted to approx. 1.24m tonnes in 2019.
