Emirates SkyCargo officially opened the first phase of its state-of-the-art cargo terminal at Dubai’s new Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC) yesterday. Located in the Logistics District in Dubai South, the new terminal dubbed Emirates SkyCentral, is the home of SkyCargo’s fleet of 15 freighters and was necessitated by the shift of SkyCargo’s maindeck fleet out of increasingly congested Dubai International Airport (DXB) in May of last year to the new DWC airport.

The new facility, currently handling 810,000 tonnes of cargo annually has the capacity – with added equipment – to handle one million tonnes before Emirates will need to build more infrastructure. This facility, located near Jebel Ali Port and Free Zone and nearly 7,000 manufacturers, consists of 85 per cent transit cargo alongside 15 per cent import/export cargo.

With an ambition of handling 12 million tonnes of cargo per year by 2050, the carrier – already the world’s largest cargo carrier, uplifting nearly 2.3 million tonnes of cargo per annum – said it will develop further capacity in stages.

Speaking to cargo media prior to the official opening by chairman and chief executive of Emirates and Airline and Group, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Nabil Sultan, Emirates divisional senior VP, cargo said: “We will continue to expand this facility, at the moment it can handle roughly about 800,000 tonnes, in the second phase we will be able to grow this facility to a million tonnes and then of course we are already working on a second and third phase.”

The second and third phase will see an additional expansion of this facility and gradually the infrastructure will be grown to cope with the entire airline moving into DWC, he added.

“The critical part is we need to have the whole infrastructure in place by 2025, that’s going to be an important milestone, to ensure that we have enough real estate and processing capability in managing the rest of our business, which is the belly traffic comprising roughly 70 per cent of our capacity, he added.

Milestone

“The opening of Emirates SkyCentral is an important milestone for us, as it represents our vision for future growth and firmly establishes Emirates SkyCargo as the world’s leading air cargo carrier across all its operational areas,” Sultan said.

“This facility also features the best and latest of what the air cargo industry has to offer, and enables us to give our customers a world class, efficient and seamless service no matter what their requirements. It also further establishes Dubai as a leading global air cargo hub, which has the advantage of a strategic location in the centre of trade between East and West.”

The facility also features 72 cool cells that are uniquely double stacked, covering the entire temperature range required for perishables and pharma products. “The mix of these we can never foresee, so with this setup we have the possibility of mixing whatever load we want and are doing what we promised to our customer without compromising,” Henrik Ambak, senior VP, cargo operations worldwide added.

SkyCargo also utilises Cool Dollies for transporting temperature sensitive products from the cold chain facility to the aircraft, something that is crucial given summer temperatures that can exceed 50 degrees Celsius.

Both the DWC and DXB facilities are currently not cool chain certified at the moment, with Ambak saying they are currently looking at certification and after consultation with customers will undertake GDP certification soon. He expects the DWC to be certified  by the beginning of next year with the first trade lane up and running by the middle of next year.

Virtual corridor

Each day SkyCargo moves nearly 1,000 tonnes of cargo – primarily maindeck cargo fed from trunk routes, from DWC to passenger bellies at DXB – using a virtual corridor between the two airports located 77km apart.  “This is not a small niche operation, it is core part of what we do,” said Ambak.

This 24/7 operation is accomplished using 47 trucks of which 12 are reefers to facilitate perishables and pharmaceuticals transport. The trucking portion is managed by local trucking service provider Allied Transport.

With a transit time of five hours, from arrival of aircraft at DWC to aircraft loading at DXB – Ambak says this crucial link was studied indepth while planning for the new facility. “Very few operators have successfully operated a two airport hub,” he said.

“We knew from beginning that we needed to be successful in our transit operations – it had to work, otherwise the forwarders would walk away. So we set a target of five hours and managing this virtual corridor we can safely and efficiently move bonded cargo between two airports.”