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Kuehne+Nagel moves into new cargo facility at Birmingham airport

Logistics company has reduced dedicated freighter service to once per week

Eric Kulisch
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Kuehne+Nagel began freighter service to Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport in April 2023. (Photo: BMH Airport Authority)

Logistics giant Kuehne+Nagel has moved into a new home base at Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM), making it easier to manage weekly chartered freight flights from Stuttgart, Germany, that began last year.

The Birmingham Airport Authority last week held a ribbon-cutting to celebrate the opening of a 53,000-square-foot facility with warehouse space plus administrative offices, 17 dock doors for trucks and five airside bays. It is the airport’s first dedicated terminal for general cargo, part of a new focus on attracting cargo business. 

The project took a year to finish and cost $28.4 million — up from the original estimate of $27 million — not including design work. Kuehne+Nagel (CXE: KNIN) is leasing the building for an initial period of six years. It temporarily operated out of an existing hangar subleased from another BHM tenant since launching service in April 2023 from Stuttgart to support demand from companies in the automotive, aerospace and pharmaceutical industries with business in the Southeast. Mercedes-Benz has an SUV assembly plant about 34 miles from Birmingham and a nearby lithium-ion battery factory.

Atlas Air operates the dedicated flights for Kuehne+Nagel utilizing Boeing 747 cargo jets, which rotate through Chicago O’Hare airport on the return trip to Germany. Alliance Ground International provides the ramp services and cargo processing.


K+N has scaled back from twice-weekly service last year to once per week and is no longer using Cargolux as a co-partner with Atlas Air, said Birmingham Airport Authority spokeswoman Kim Hunt.

K+N previously routed Mercedes shipments through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. BHM is much closer to the Mercedes plant, providing the company faster transit and more flexibility. The lease of a cargo terminal in Birmingham underscores how freight forwarding agents have increasingly migrated some operations to secondary airports because of operational constraints, congestion and higher costs at major airports that generally cater to passenger airlines.

“This facility is the result of a lot of hard work and a strong belief that Birmingham should play a key role in moving cargo in the southeast,” said Ronald Mathieu, president and CEO of the Birmingham Airport Authority, in a news release.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.


Mercedes-Benz to benefit from new cargo service at Birmingham airport

Eric Kulisch

Eric is the Supply Chain and Air Cargo Editor at FreightWaves. An award-winning business journalist with extensive experience covering the logistics sector, Eric spent nearly two years as the Washington, D.C., correspondent for Automotive News, where he focused on regulatory and policy issues surrounding autonomous vehicles, mobility, fuel economy and safety. He has won two regional Gold Medals and a Silver Medal from the American Society of Business Publication Editors for government and trade coverage, and news analysis. He was voted best for feature writing and commentary in the Trade/Newsletter category by the D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He won Environmental Journalist of the Year from the Seahorse Freight Association in 2014 and was the group's 2013 Supply Chain Journalist of the Year. In December 2022, Eric was voted runner up for Air Cargo Journalist by the Seahorse Freight Association. As associate editor at American Shipper Magazine for more than a decade, he wrote about trade, freight transportation and supply chains. He has appeared on Marketplace, ABC News and National Public Radio to talk about logistics issues in the news. Eric is based in Vancouver, Washington. He can be reached for comments and tips at [email protected]