Ethiopian Airlines is on course to cement its position as Africa’s leading airline with the scheduled commissioning of the largest cargo terminal on the continent in about three months.
Ethiopia Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam says that the facility is now 82% complete and is expected to be operational in April.
The cargo terminal will have storage capacity of 1.2-million tons a year and will be capable of handling eight B747-800 freighters at a time.
Construction of the first phase cost about $150-million.
On completion, the capability of the terminal will be equivalent to that of the cargo terminals at Amsterdam Schiphol, Singapore Changi or Hong Kong airports.
Besides the cargo terminal, the airline is also set to commission a newly built wide-body maintenance hangar that is now 97% complete.
“Despite the sluggish growth in the world’s mature markets, in 2016, we remained focused on the robust execution of our Vision 2025, which has proved to be a winning strategy in today’s hypercompetitive and complex airline business,” says GebreMariam.
The infrastructure investment forms part of Ethiopia Airlines’ aggressive expansion programme, which is geared towards increasing the number of passengers from the current 5.2-million a year to 18-million a year by 2025 and increasing the fleet from 82 to 110 aeroplanes.
Last year, the airline took delivery of eight new aircraft.