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.
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