Air cargo firms grow capacity at Miami International Airport

To keep growing the capacity-constricted cargo industry here, Miami-Dade commissioners have initially approved a lease with air cargo firms National Air Charters Inc. and National Airport Services Inc. so that they can add space to expand. The lease is headed to a final commission vote.

The expansion includes an added 47,726 square feet of land at the building where they now operate, of which 43,677 is warehouse and 4,049 is ground floor offices, as well as, 10,858 square feet of mezzanine offices and six new parking spaces, county documents detail.

In the 10-year leased, the companies would pay over $1.09 million in annual rent in monthly installments of $90,324 – subject to yearly increases, or 7% of monthly gross revenues generated from the companies’ activities, whichever is greater.

The agreement includes a nonrefundable one-time fee of $400,000 in five $80,000 payments to cover costs of work already done by another Miami International Airport (MIA) tenant that was in the process of renovating the site.

National Air Charters is listed as a cargo airline on the Aviation Department’s website, while National Airport Services is ​​one of the seven cargo handlers operating at the airport. Both list Jorge Y. Alvarez as sole owner.

National Air Charters carried 759.12 tons of freight through MIA in the last fiscal year (October 2020 to September 2021) and has carried 881.45 tons from October 2021 to July 2022, Aviation Department documents show.

“Their tonnage is up 63% so far this fiscal year compared to last year at this point,” Greg Chin, communications director of the department, told Miami Today in an email.

MIA cargo operations are nearing capacity. Cargo shipments at the airport totaled more than 1.3 million tons through June, 3.2% above last year. International freight was up 2.7%, while domestic tonnage grew 5.8% year-over-year, a press note from the Aviation Department says.

The airport handles 79% of all air imports and 77% of all air exports in the region. It is the leading international freight airport in the Americas as well as a high-ranking global gateway freight hub with over 2.2 million tons of cargo annually.

Data from the department reveal that the total air freight at MIA is valued at $60.5 billion, or 92% of the dollar value of Florida’s total air imports and exports, and 39% of the state’s total air and sea trade with the world. To run its operations, MIA has 3.4 million square feet of cargo- dedicated warehouse, cold storage, office and support space.

A forecast by a consultant to the department projected that by 2031 MIA will hit 3.7 million tons in airfreight, reaching 4.9 million tons in 2041.

The space where the companies are to expand opened up after Swissport Cargo Services L.P. decided to move into a different building – although they were in the process of upgrading the premises.

The Aviation Department received “numerous inquiries” from potential future tenants for the available space, so staff developed a list of conditions to select and rank the offers, a memo from Chief Operations Officer Jimmy Morales says. Both companies made the proposal that offered the most rent revenue. As a result, they were selected.

As Miami Today previously reported, county commissioners in March authorized the department to negotiate with CR USA Airport Management Inc. and AIRIS USA LLC for a lease to construct a “Vertically Integrated Cargo Community” that is to nearly double MIA’s cargo capacity in less than five years.

The project is a five-story, 1.7-million-square-foot, state-of-the-art cargo handling facility that would have an annual capacity of 4.5 million metric tons. It is expected to be completed by 2027 and create 3,000 permanent cargo operation jobs with a $2 billion private investment.

DHL Express announced in November 2021 that it was investing $78 million to renovate and expand its hub at the airport for state-of-the-art equipment for a fully automated package sorting system and doubled its warehouse capacity to 206,000 square feet.

Last December, FedEx Express completed a $72.2 million expansion in its MIA hub that added more than 138,000 square feet to the main sorting facility, bringing it to more than 282,000 square feet.

In addition, the airport is in conversations with two major cargo partners, Atlas Airlines and the Florida East Coast Railway, which have presented conceptual cargo master plans to MIA for review, a memo from the Aviation Department released in May says.