The flowering of Bogota’s air cargo

OUTSTANDING airfreight facilities, like HACTL’s Superterminal at Hong Kong, invite a lot of copy-cat moves, but Maurice Thorin, managing partner at AirLogistix, sees no merit in doing so.
“Passenger requirements are  generally more or less the same around the world, so you can copy and paste successful passenger terminal designs. But cargo is different,” he remarks.
Each facility has to reflect the types of goods it handles and also the local requirements and processes and peculiar regulatory set-ups, he stresses.
AirLogistix designed the new cargo terminals at Bogota’s El Dorado Airport in a sweeping revamp of its cargo infrastructure that was completed last year.
The design not only took into account the high proportion of perishables but also aspects like the fact that customs clearance is performed in a off-airport bonded warehouse.
These elements, along with actual and projected volumes, were fed into a simulation of operations and processes to determine the best layout, flows and productivity.
According to Ray Brimble, chief executive of cargo facility developer Lynxs, which built and manages the cargo infrastructure at Bogota, the airport achieves much improved flow-through velocity – a credential which is increasingly needed in modern cargo facilities.
The overhaul of the cargo area boosted its capacity to one million tonnes, with ample room for further expansion.
Read more about how Colombia is keeping pace with the perishables growth market in the next edition of Air Cargo News 20 May 2013 – No 752
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