Incheon Airport constructing $28M global distribution center for e-commerce

Incheon International Airport is building a $28 million global distribution center for e-commerce this August in the Incheon Free Economic Zone; the project is expected to generate about 7,200 tonnes of cargo. [caption id="attachment_57135665" align="alignright" width="300"] Cargo operations continue to grow at Incheon International Airport. (Photo/IIAC)[/caption] E-commerce is expected to grow by 50% in the next four years, according to a report from IATA . The Asia Pacific region is leading the e-commerce market; South Korea has the fifth most e-commerce sales, with China taking the No. 1 spot and Japan taking the No. 4 spot. The United States ranked second and the United Kingdom ranked third. The Incheon Free Economic Zone, which includes two airport logistics complexes and cargo terminal areas, began construction in 2003 — two years after Incheon International Airport (ICN) opened — and is expected to grow through 2030, according to Incheon Metropolitan City. An ICN spokesperson told Air Cargo Next that the airport is committed to the “construction of a one-stop e-commerce-dedicated [global distribution] fulfillment center equipped with cross-border e-commerce fulfillment functions, state-of-the-art logistics facilities and IT systems to contribute to the advancement of logistics and the achievement of Incheon International Airport as a logistics hub in Northeast Asia.” Electronic customs clearance The global distribution center (GDC) will benefit from UNI-PASS, an electronic customs clearance system developed by the Korean Customs Service (KCS) and used at ICN. KCS can process 430 million declarations and 50 million travelers each year electronically through UNI-PASS, which is composed of 77 modules and has five subordinate systems: single window; clearance management; cargo management; information management; and administration. The system, which integrates 39 government agencies, enables information sharing among regulatory agencies, KCS and other stakeholders. Export clearances that used to take more than 24 hours now take 1.5 minutes, and the time taken to process import clearances has been reduced from more than two days to 1.5 hours, according to KCS. Increased cargo volume capacity ICN’s air cargo accounted for 33% of South Korea’s total trade volume, processing more than $40 billion worth of export and import trade, in 2021, according to the airport. The GDC will import and store products from global shippers, classify and repackage the products when individual orders are made, and then deliver them. The center will have a 13,440-square-meter footprint, with one utility floor below ground and seven floors above, including three mezzanine floors, all used for storage and logistics operation with ancillary space for amenities and offices. “We are pursuing a business of expanding cargo terminals of world-renowned airlines, such as FedEx and UPS , at Incheon Airport; actively attracting global shipping centers of logistics companies in the free trade zone of nearly 600,000 square meters to secure cargo volume; and planning to have dedicated terminals for fresh cargo such as semiconductors and pharmaceuticals,” an Incheon International Airport Corporation official said in a release. Hub for air cargo IATA forecasted that 40% of the world’s air cargo will be handled by airports in the Asia-Pacific region by 2040. “Having handled the second-largest amount of international cargo in the world last year and in 2021, Incheon International Airport is naturally a vital hub for us,” a UPS spokesperson told Air Cargo Next. “Incheon is particularly important for connecting trade lanes between Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe. Meanwhile, Korea is a center of trade for growing fields such as tech, health care and cosmetics.” UPS recently almost doubled its warehouse space at Incheon to more than 14,000 square meters.

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