The US$1.1-million refrigeration unit was built by Mercury Air Cargo, a whollyownedsubsidiary of Los Angeles-based Mercury Air Group and the facility islocated at Mercury’s Avion Drive CargoFacility at LAX.
The new refrigeration unit was designed to accommodate a projected 7,700 tonnes of new perishable products arriving annually on LAN Cargo freighters from South America. Currently, the perishable traffic flown to LAX by LAN Cargo is one quarter to one half of the projected quantity because of lack of sufficient refrigeration at LAX to accommodate the flowers and provide a continuing “cold chain.”
Currently, the largest refrigeration units at LAX are approximately 4,000 square feet. The additional volume of flowers will come from Bogota, Colombia, and Quito, Ecuador, and will now be shipped to LAX instead of previously entering the US at Miami International Airport.
Direct air shipment to LAX is expected to create a shift in the US flower supply chain and establish LAX as a new West Coast hub for the flower trade by saving considerable time and making flowers available to consumers on a faster, fresher and less-expensive basis.
According to local flower distributors, when shipping flowers from Bogota to Carlsbad, California, a major floral distribution point for the West Coast, the trip takes 59.5 hours total travel time via Miami. When shipping via LAX, total travel time is 15 hours – a time savings of 75 per cent.
The new refrigeration facility will not only accommodate the storage of large amounts of flowers, but soon, workers also will be able to separate the flower shipments within the 35-degree Fahrenheit storage environment and prepare them for direct distribution from LAX to flower shops and supermarkets throughout California and the western US.
LAX is the nation’s busiest origin-anddestination passenger airport and ranks 13th worldwide in air cargo volume. Last year, the airport handled 1.63 tonnes of freight and mail with more than 50 per cent of LAX’s air cargo, international in origin or destination. LAN Cargo has 24 weekly flights at LAX and handles approximately 68,000 tonnes of cargo annually.