My hunch is drastic measures will be taken, but such is the way of public spending it won’t happen until the money has been spent unfortunately. So they are going to have to be very lucky to make it work.
Coppard going out to China and begging for investors is a sign all is not rosy behind the scenes. Even the talk of it paying off through business rate retention doesn’t seem plausible. The area is an investment zone, the idea that companies will be rushing to Gateway East to pay more in business rates seems a bit of a fallacy, it’s probably also causing contention at Peel towers too.
The less said about the mechanic at the moment the better I think. He’s getting fed information from the head of cargo at FlyDoncaster, this is the guy who headed it up previously. Expect low earning cargo like flower shipments and other assorted low value ad/hoc flights which EMA doesn’t want so prices out. Air Cargo is not a growing sector when factoring in the plugging of the De Minimis loophole and the impact that will have on cheap goods flooding the U.K. Freight on passenger aircraft is growing. It’s my understanding that things aren’t a bed of roses at European either, a great shame as I know a few people who have gone to fly there or have flown for them and they’re a decent place to work by all accounts. But it does suggest that the pure freight market isn’t doing to well outside of your big parcel players.
As an aside, MAN has a freight throughput of something like 110,000 tonnes per year, 55% of that arrives as belly hold cargo on passenger aircraft. Much was made previously (around 20 years ago) of FedEx looking to open an integrator facility at DSA, Peel went in all guns blazing, but they weren’t convinced. Their main distribution depot was Stoke. I know this quite well as I worked for FedEx at the time and asked the boss about it (was interested in moving into the aviation division). It was suggested that DSA, and indeed Yorkshire, was too far from the main distribution centres to make economic sense to fly goods through DSA. Stoke, and indeed EMA, sit within the ‘Golden Triangle’ for freight integrators and parcel networks. This is why both FedEx and UPS have invested hundreds of millions in the last few years into facilities at EMA. The UPS one I went around whilst on an airside audit several years ago, it’s huge! When I was at FedEx we had trucks going to and from Stoke each night, leaving full at 7pm and arriving back at 5am ready to offload for local distribution. I know that Doncaster has quite a significant number of fulfilment centres, but these are not fed directly by air, the goods are shipped to those fulfilment centres from the main airports or distribution hubs elsewhere in the country. Exactly like my experience at FedEx. There is a subtle difference but it can be used to mislead, as in the case of DSA and the council.
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