Wednesday 11 June 2014 - Australia’s largest mover of freight, Toll Group, is boosting its parcel delivery capabilities by building a $150 million freight sorting facility, the largest of its kind in Australia.
Works have started on the 71,000 square metre facility on 20 hectares next to Melbourne Airport, which is key to growing Toll’s extensive national distribution network.
Toll Group Managing Director Brian Kruger said the landmark investment will help increase the capabilities of Toll’s dedicated online parcel delivery service, Toll Consumer Delivery, enhancing Toll’s ability to service this growth sector of the economy.
“The custom-designed facility, with its highly specialised sortation system will triple our current parcel sorting capacity in Melbourne to an unprecedented 35,000 parcels per hour,” Mr Kruger said.
“Given the growth we’re seeing in online retail, it is important we continue to improve our already-extensive national network to make it second to none.”
Mr Kruger said the facility will provide all sorts of benefits in terms of improving safety, fleet productivity, parcel sorting speed and accuracy, and energy and cost efficiencies.
“It is Toll’s willingness and ability to invest in state-of-the-art facilities and technology that makes it the industry leader in the express parcel delivery market.”
Toll decided Tullamarine, with its immediate access to the airport and key arterial roads, was the most suitable sitefollowing an extensive 12-month modelling process.
That process considered infrastructure and demographic data and projections, freight task data, growth rates, and customer and industry trends.
Mr Kruger said the new facility will be home to more than 500 operational and administrative roles, currently spread across three sites in Altona and Dandenong.
“This important part of our national network adds to our other industry-leading investments over the past few years that include the $170 million freight sorting facility that will soon start operating in Sydney.”
Mr Kruger thanked Melbourne Airport, the Victorian Department of State Development, Business & Innovation, and Hume City Council who worked hard to bring about this project.
The facility is being developed in conjunction with Australia Pacific Airports (Melbourne) Pty Ltd – with Toll investing $50 million and Melbourne Airport $100 million – and is expected to be operational by the end of 2015.