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Our Bureau

Mumbai, Sept 10 DHL, the express and logistics company, announced the completion of its Central Asia Hub (CAH) expansion way before schedule on Wednesday.

It was originally slated to be complete by 2013. The expansion attracted an investment of $110 million. This takes the total investment in the facility to $210 million, said a statement from the company.

The company claims it to be the first large-scale automated express hub in Asia Pacific and would boost DHL’s operational capability in Asia.

According to the release, the hub at the Hong Kong International Airport, has doubled in size to 35,000 sq m and is expected to handle 40 million shipments this year. With the expansion, the highly sophisticated and automated facility has a throughput of 75,000 pieces an hour (p/h) of flyers and conveyable shipments, an increase of 114 per cent compared to the 35,000 p/h throughput capacity before the expansion. With the automation, the throughput cycle time has been further reduced from 12 minutes to just 7 minutes.

“Asia Pacific continues to be a key growth driver - in the first half of 2008, we grew 13 per cent year-on-year.

The expansion of the CAH is a testament to the continued growth of intra-Asia trade and the Asia-Europe trade lane. Currently, over 60 per cent of express cargo processed by the Central Asia Hub is intra-Asia Pacific shipments, a figure we expect to continue to grow alongside rising intra-regional trade,” said Mr Dan McHugh, CEO, DHL Express Asia Pacific.

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