In a recent presentation on the theme of “Boom and bust scenarios for airports,” de Backer, drawing on the expertise of his company’s involvement in many major cargo projects, said one of the key factors was aligning the terminal development with the forecast cargo volume growth.
These projects include Hong Kong’s new extension to the Asia Airfreight Terminal which opened in December 2006, SATS in Singapore, the Nippon Cargo Airlines facility in Los Angeles, and the British Airways terminal in Heathrow.
He differentiated four possible types of terminals. There was the basic fork lift operation which was suitable for throughputs of up to 50,000 tonnes a year, but carried with it a higher risk of damage to cargo.
Secondly there was a small equipped terminal, using slave pallets, roller bed lanes and racking for loose cargo, which could handle up to 100,000 tonnes a year. To expand this concept beyond such a throughput would need a huge space and would create traceability problems for cargo.
The third type of terminal was a medium- sized manual or semi-automated terminal, with a dedicated ULD system served by stacker cranes, build-up and breakdown areas, and a bypass lane for intact ULDs. This could handle up to400,000 tonnes a year.
Finally, the fourth concept, for the largest cargo and busiest cargo terminals, was exemplified by the new Asia Airfreight Terminal in Hong Kong that had automated, high throughput machinery and an IT system behind it to optimise the movement of cargo. In such terminals it was important to have 99.9 per cent reliability in the machinery. “This is different from manual systems where you can afford a breakdown from time to time,” de Backer said.
Automation was always controversial, he admitted, but it had four big advantages. It could increase terminal throughput through optimising processes, it provided cargo tracking, it reduced labour costs and it improved security through reducing human intervention in the system.
However, it also required qualified staff , a major culture change and clean data.“There is no point in having a large automated cargo terminal if the IT systems are unable to support it,” de Backer warned.
Other factors to consider when deciding what type of terminal to have was what the future growth might be, what kind of aircraft it would be servicing, how much intact versus loose cargo there would be, whether cargo storage would be allowed or not and what the volumes would be at peak times.
“People always talk of terminal capacity in tonnes per annum, but what matters is if it can handle all the freight it needs at the busiest times,” de Backer pointed out.
It was also important to have a building that was a suitable shell for the handling system to be put inside it. “People sometimes focus on the architecture and forget about the functionality,” he said. In addition, airlines should ideally be involved in the commissioning phase, and usage ramped up rather than going for a big bang approach.