Bordeaux-Merignac Airport has upgraded its infrastructure so it can handle freight “of plant and animal origin”.
The French gateway says areas dedicated to phytosanitary and veterinary inspections are now open. Bordeaux Airport has for many years been an approved European Union Border Inspection Post (BIP) for imports of plants and products of animal origin.
It says it wanted to renew and extend facilities for regulatory inspections on entry into the European area, to meet the needs firstly of public authorities and secondly of the many importing companies in the Greater Southwest Region in France.
The new facilities, located in the customs area on the runway side, comprise around 300 square metres and include two unloading areas, two veterinary testing laboratories (one for human consumption and one for non-human consumption), one phytosanitary testing laboratory, and four cold rooms.
Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport president of the board of directors, Pascal Personne says: “With this investment, Bordeaux Airport again demonstrates its commitment to the attractiveness of our great region by offering new prospects to local importers and exporters.”
The aim of the companies using this BIP platform is to shorten the time allocated to import inspections and to carry out these formalities as close as possible to the end customer.
The airport says this includes many companies including airfreight agents, freight forwarders, freight assistants and airlines (Air France, Air Algeria, KLM, British Airways, Iberia, Royal Air Maroc, TAP, Tunisair, etc.).
And the arrival in Mérignac of other international airlines (Türkish Airlines, Aegean Airlines, Brussels Airlines) has further strengthened regional potential for trading goods with the rest of the world.
The public authorities in charge of veterinary and phytosanitary inspections now have the ability to process and analyse larger quantities of products under specific protocols (fragmentation of products and samples, non-contamination, etc.).
In 2015, airfreight volume at Bordeaux Airport increased by 16.2 per cent or (+9,770 tonnes) including 470 tonnes of humanitarian freight processed on behalf of the European logistics platform of Médecins sans Frontières based in Mérignac.
The total tonnage of air cargo in Bordeaux, including postal traffic and overland airfreight (freight transport by lorry to the major hubs), was 24,037 tonnes in 2015.
