WSI shapes up for shipping

“The cargo hub precinct will create over 1,000 jobs alone – but not only that, there are jobs that are being created around the airport, outside the airport precinct itself. Right next door we’ve got Bradfield. It’s already got an advanced manufacturing readiness centre that continues to grow. We’re seeing private investment moving in around the airport. We’re looking at Kemps Creek, which has the largest Amazon sortation centre. It’s got Australia Post’s largest sortation centre. They’re sitting right there – from their top floor, you can look down at the airport – and they’ve been saying, ‘Get on with the job’.”

At 733,000 square metres, stage one of the precinct – which has also attracted Menzies Aviation, dnata Cargo, and dnata Catering & Retail – can cater for eight 747/777 freighters or 16 737/A320 domestic freighters at the same time, and has an initial capacity for around 270,000 tonnes per year, or roughly half of Sydney Kingsford Smith’s throughput. It won’t stop there, though – eventually, the airport estimates it will have capacity for around 1.8 million tonnes of freight annually, which is about quadruple Sydney Airport’s capacity.

“This is going to add 33 per cent to the capacity of freight for NSW and the country overall,” said Federal Transport Minister Catherine King, opening the precinct. “It will add significantly to the opportunities for our farmers, for our producers, for our manufacturing sector to get their goods to the world, but also for those many Australians who use e-commerce, being able to both get their goods out, but also get those goods that you’re buying in much more quickly.

“There’s 10,000 workers who’ve worked on both the airport and the terminal and the runway and the cargo precinct overall; that’s creating 10,000 jobs here in Western Sydney. But really, the legacy of this is the thousands of jobs, the thousands of workers who work in the freight and logistics industry who are here going to be able to really see those jobs into the future.

“As we’ve said many times before, we used to see people look into Sydney CBD for jobs and everybody commuting from Western Sydney into the CBD for jobs. What this actually does is it means that Sydney is now looking to the west. The jobs growth is here, with the projections of over 3 million people living here wanting to use these facilities; really, this is a fantastic opportunity for jobs for the future.”

Qantas Freight alone is stationing two A330 freighters and six A321 freighters at the airport, with plans for three more planes in future. According to Qantas Freight chief executive Igor Kwiatkowski, the precinct will shave hours off delivery times into Western Sydney.

“The key thing about this facility is it’s significantly more automated than the operations that we have in some other ports today,” he says. “So, for us, getting that reliability and consistency and speed for consumers is really important. The thing we don’t want is freight sitting in the warehouse. We want freight moving through as quickly as possible in both directions. So, that’s the thing we’re very focused on. We think we’ll get a much quicker speed of delivery, and actually create more time for consumers to shop domestically, because you can then shop later, pick up the parcel later, and deliver it still on time, because we need less time in the sheds to be able to do that.

“I think the other part here is where we’re located in Western Sydney. You think about the warehousing around Western Sydney now, and what will grow into the future. There’ll be more businesses that are based out here. Again, you’re cutting down commuting times when freight needs to get to or from the airport – not only when it’s at the airport, we can do it quicker, but actually getting here will be quicker. So that’ll be in the space of definitely hours’ improvement.”