DHL Express has stepped up its presence at Marseille Provence Airport and has inaugurated a hub that has doubled in size as part of an eight million euro investment.
The surface area of the warehouse has more than doubled, from 1,300 square metres to 3,000 square metres and the workforce will also soon be doubled, increasing from 42 to 84 employees by the end of February.
DHL says it has made investment in response to increasing traffic after it saw a 20 per cent rise between 2014 and 2015, due mainly to the growth of traffic with Tunisia and Malta.
Starting Monday 18 January, the renovations of the hub carried out to extend and modernise this site will allow it to add Algeria to the list of countries with direct links from France via DHL Express. It will start a new direct flight to Algiers on 18 January.
This site, is dedicated to international traffic and direct points of exchange with the countries of North Africa, and will take on a new dimension due to the surface area of its warehouse as well as the number of employees have more than doubled to handle the increase in traffic transiting daily through its sorting lines.
DHL Express France chief executive officer, Michel Akavi says: “Our Marseille hub plays a crucial role in our exchanges with North Africa. By increasing both human and material resources to handle this traffic, we are responding to the growth in volume and providing additional quality of service to our customers.
“This investment demonstrates the importance of France for DHL within its international infrastructure.”
The Marseille hub is one of DHL’s 19 regional hubs throughout the world and one of two in France, the other being at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport site.
DHL France director, Hervé Allié notes: “This new hub will have a crucial impact on the network. It will allow us to support the Leipzig and Brussels hubs. Thanks to its new equipment, we are now able to handle the sorting of pieces from Leipzig and Brussels, which we were previously unable to do. The Marseille platform will lighten the sorting activities on these two sites.”
