One of Northern Kentucky’s largest employers is considering a $175 million investment into their North American superhub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
The German packaging and shipping giant uses the airport to transport packages across the country and the world. The 194-acre campus employs over 3,000 workers.
At Thursday’s Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority meeting, the state approved $1 million worth of economic incentives for DHL to build an air cargo maintenance facility. DHL’s potential investment could create up to 86 full-time jobs.
This incentive was part of a larger package approved by the finance authority. The organization approved incentives for nine different projects totaling approximately $480 million. The package also included an incentive for Matrix Pack North America, a paper product manufacturer, to construct a 100,000-square-foot facility for $47.9 million project in unincorporated Boone County.
Since 2010, CVG has made a concerted effort to increase the airport’s cargo footprint. Those efforts have largely paid off. In 2021, Amazon Air opened its global superhub at CVG after a $1.5 billion investment.
The airport experienced a 149% increase in cargo between 2015 and 2022. At May’s Kenton County Airport Board meeting, CVG Vice President of Air Service Development Bobby Span touted that CVG was North America’s seventh largest cargo airport and the fourteenth largest in the world.
“We really have set an amazing pace with our cargo activity,” Span said during the meeting.
Since its opening in 2013, DHL has consistently poured money into its CVG campus. In recent years, the company has invested over $70 million to upgrade its hub, including installing aircraft handling equipment, autosort systems and various facilities enhancements, according to a company press release.
DHL’s most recent large-scale investment in the airport came in 2016 when the company spent approximately $108 million to increase its cargo sorting capacity and ability to accommodate more aircraft.
