New facility to massively expand freight at Avalon

THE amount of freight passing through Melbourne Avalon Airport will jump up to tenfold through a new terminal now in operation.

The $8 million air freight terminal, located on the west side of the airport precinct in a hangar formerly used to service Qantas 747s, will allow Avalon to increase its annual cargo processing from 10,000 tonnes now to eventually 100,000 tonnes.

The facility operates 24 hours a day and be equipped with advanced scanning technology, making it one of the first airports in Australia to comply with the new Border Force security screening standards, allowing arriving freight to be processed faster.

Already in use, the terminal has processed specialised cargo from the defence industry in the past few months, and will soon handle sets and equipment for the coming Lady Gaga concerts.

Motorsport freight for major events such as MotoGP, Formula 1 and World Superbikes will also use the facility.

Victorian Minister for for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing Colin Brooks officially opened the terminal on Monday this week, alongside Lara MP Ella George and Geelong MP Christine Couzens.

“[The terminal] is a massive investment in this airport, which is the beating part of the Avalon employment precinct, and the Avalon employment precinct is a critical part of our industrial growth in Victoria,” Mr Brooks said.

“So this is a really important jobs announcement today. It’ll help to drive jobs through this region for decades to come.”

Avalon chief executive officer Ari Suss said the airport believed freight and logistics would drive the next era of economic growth at Avalon.

He said building a similar facility on a greenfields site would cost about $100 million.

“What we’re doing is repurposing a space that obviously had a lot of workers here – we’ve hired 10 or 11 workers so far in supporting the operations that go on here, but we could get into things like a three-team roster per day, 24 hours a day.

“We’ve got the capacity to build another one of these facilities again… we could double [freight processing] again.”

Other attendees included City of Greater Geelong mayor Stretch Kontelj and Colac Otway Shire mayor Jason Schram.