Cargo airports in the U.S., such as Rickenbacker in Columbus, Ohio, have seen strong growth over the past year. Rickenbacker is host to regular flights from Cathay Pacific, Cargolux and, above, Emirates.
Credit: COLUMBUS REGIONAL AIRPORT AUTHORITY
Cargo airports in the U.S. are upping their game with new facilities and capabilities. Unlike major passenger gateways, they have seen strong growth over the past year, and this momentum is expected to continue.
Already bent on expansion, Rockford, Illinois, International Airport (RFD) upped its game in February. Last October the airport authority had announced plans to build a 90,000 sq ft cargo terminal to supplement its existing infrastructure. Barely four months later it had decided to upgrade the project to include a second cargo building with a footprint of 100,000 sq ft. In addition, RFD is paving tarmac to add parking positions for six Boeing 747 freighters.
The first phase of the US$42 million project, comprising of the 90,000 sq ft building and two parking positions, is scheduled to be operational by July 1 this year. The rest should be completed by October, said Ken Ryan, the airport’s director of cargo.
Landside the airport will get a new access road to facilitate truck access, he added.
RFD’s throughput surged more than 15% last year to 1,244,699 tonnes. It marked the second consecutive year of double-digit growth, following an 11% rise in tonnage in 2019.
The second-largest North American hub of UPS, the airport has ridden the wave of e-commerce, which was further reinforced by Amazon, which built a 200,000 sq ft facility at RFD with adjacent ramp space for 10 freighters.
The airport has positioned itself as an alternative to Chicago, one hour’s drive away, and has been designated by some international freighter operators as a back-up airport in case of problems at the big gateway. It has also handled charters, but regular international freighter operations, a key objective of the RFD management, proved elusive until last September, when forwarder Senator extended its dedicated trans-Atlantic freighter run between Germany and South Carolina to RFD, making it its designated gateway for the US Midwest. That was followed in January by a weekly freighter from Tokyo and Seoul via Munich, which is operated by National Airlines on behalf of DB Schenker.
Rickenbacker, the all-cargo airport of Columbus, Ohio, has also enjoyed strong growth in international cargo throughput. The airport is a long-standing gateway for imports from Asia to the eastern US, notably for fashion, which produced a steady stream of 747 charters over the years, besides regular flights by the likes of Emirates, Cargolux and Cathay Pacific. Fashion imports into the US tumbled last year, but other commodities were going strong, led by personal protection equipment. This was the biggest driver behind the airport’s record tally of 120 freighters handled last June.
The foreign trade zone that covers the airport handled US$11.3 billion worth of goods in 2019, an increase of 8.9% from previous year. It ranked sixth out of 193 active FTZs in the US.
Brian Clancy, managing director of Logistics Capital & Strategy, a strategic supply chain consultancy, noted that the slump in bellyhold capacity in the wake of the pandemic revealed the underlying freighter footprint of the US airfreight market. Whereas gateways with a heavy reliance on bellyhold capacity like JFK, Newark, Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle saw contraction in their traffic, important freighter gateways like Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles fared much better, as freighter operators doubled down on their core networks, trucking to and from other points.
Above all, Chicago O’Hare registered strong growth both in imports and exports (up 22.5% and 4.5% respectively), as forwarders and importers routed East Coast traffic over ORD. With capacity there stretched, Rockford and Rickenbacker have benefited, Clancy said.
He predicted that their momentum would hold, driven by growth in demand as well as by a strategic change in sourcing that sees more US importers shift from ocean transport out of Asia to air cargo going to a fulfillment center. This cuts order cycle times down from 125 days to a weekly cycle and gives importers greater flexibility to deal with volatility. It also reduces the order size, minimizing the risk of betting on the wrong product, he added.
The Columbus Regional Airport Authority (CRAA), which manages Rickenbacker, has set its sights on the pharma industry as the next sector of industry to go after. In February it announced plans to develop a pharmaceutical handling facility at the airport. The US$1.5 million project, which is slated for completion in the third quarter of this year, will have controlled temperature in the 15-25 degrees Celsius range in the acceptance, holding and processing zones and a cold storage zone for goods that require temperatures in the 2-8 degrees range.
“With the addition of this specialized product handling capability we are diversifying our growing portfolio of services and further establishing Rickenbacker International Airport as a global gateway,” said Joseph Nardone, president and CEO of the CRAA.
Over at RFD, Ryan is already looking ahead to further facility expansion, as the two new buildings are already largely signed up for. The site where they are being built has room for two more buildings with scope for another 200,000 sq ft of cargo space.
Ian Putzger
