Construction of Budapest Airport’s new dedicated freight center, Cargo City, part of the $190 million BUD:2020 Development Program at the Hungarian hub, has begun.

A $38 million investment into a new 215,000 square-foot cargo handling facility will centralize cargo operations and expand the airport’s handling capacity to handle increasing air cargo volumes at BUD in the years to come.

After unprecedented cargo volume development of 39 percent over two years, BUD processed a record 127,145 tons of cargo in 2017, and has seen a further 15.5-percent increase in tonnage between January and August 2018 compared to the same period in 2017.

As part of the BUD:2020 Development Program, Budapest Airport opened two state-of-the-art express facilities in 2017 with a total area of 16,000 sq m in order to supply increasing volumes from the express and ecommerce business.

“This is an exciting milestone for the Hungarian cargo community,” said René Droese, Executive Director Property and Cargo at Budapest Airport. “Following on from our infrastructure developments for the integrator market, our aim is to provide the ideal environment for air cargo with our Cargo City project. With the start of AirBridgeCargo and Silk Way West Airlines services in 2018, we now have five freighter operators at BUD. Volumes from our existing full-freighter partners, such as Cargolux, Turkish Cargo, and Qatar Airways Cargo, are also increasing. The cargo connectivity of BUD is also continuously expanding via the new belly cargo services of LOT, American Airlines, and Qatar Airways, as well as Emirates, Air China, and Air Canada Rouge.”

“Hungary is the world’s seventh most popular investment destination, according to IBM’s Global Location Trends 2017 Annual Report,” said President of the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA) Róbert Ésik. “The Cargo City development at BUD supports and warmly welcomes the new investments in Hungary.”

“Air cargo is of strategic importance to BUD, and Cargo City will ensure that we continue to provide our growing customer base with efficient, modern facilities, so that they can thrive in our booming catchment area,” added Jost Lammers, CEO of Budapest Airport.

Budapest this summer welcomed Kuehne + Nagel to its cargo community and saw four new North American routes launched, connecting New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia in the USA, and Toronto, Canada to Budapest.

As part of ongoing investment in its cargo offering, the Central European hub will once again team up with its sister airports Düsseldorf and Hamburg, Germany.