The DFW Difference: How the Texas hub became a gateway to Latin America

Rising Lone Star

Dallas didn’t always feature so prominently in airfreight, and one weakness, in particular, has held it back for decades – a paucity of cold-chain capacity. “It gets hot here in Texas,” explained Ryann Malaby, national sales executive at BTX Global Logistics, and also president of the DFW Air Cargo Association. “And on top of that, we didn’t have the proper cold chain availability.” BTX Dallas is heavily involved in expedited forwarding at DFW, and is less exposed to the shortage of cold-chain capacity, Malaby noted. But she added that once this deficit is addressed, “it will hopefully increase the movement of pharmaceuticals and goods of that nature.”

Even Ackerman admits that cold chain is an area where the airport has fallen short. “We live in a pretty hot part of the country, and we have substandard cold chain facilities,” he said. “If we want to be a player in perishables, we can’t have substandard cold-chain facilities.” The airport has moved to address the matter. A state of the art, 37,000 square foot facility, featuring a dedicated perishable handling facility is set to come online later this summer. Originally an AirLogistix USA project, the facility was acquired earlier this year by Dubai-based dnata, which has extensive experience operating cold chain facilities in some of the hottest climates on the planet.

But the new facility is just one part of a wider re-envisioning of the airport’s cargo infrastructure. That includes building roads and ramps, aimed at facilitating connectivity. “Our commercial development team is working on a multi-decade redevelopment program for cargo, because some of our infrastructure was built 20 years ago,” Ackerman said.

At the time of this writing, the only significant cold-chain facility at DFW is operated by American Airlines Cargo. This facility is just under 4,000 square feet, which is an addition to the current 1,800 square-foot perishable and 800-square-foot pharmaceutical coolers at the DFW hub. “Cold chain is something that we are able to do really well,” said Rick Elieson, president of cargo at American Airlines. “Given our presence at DFW, it only makes sense that those would come together there.” Elieson insists that the carrier’s cold-chain strategy is still a work in progress, though, noting that AA was still developing its infrastructure play at DFW, and that it will “be a big one.” Either way, Elieson says, “there’s no way that we aren’t at the forefront of any development in Dallas.”