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“From its beginning, Atlanta has always served as a great crossroads of transportation, trade and culture – a gateway to the future.” –Mayor Shirley Franklin
Founded as a railroad called Terminus, Atlanta’s global reach has stretched well beyond its humble beginnings as a rail nexus. Today, over 80% of the US population can be reached within one day of Atlanta.
With three major interstate highways intersecting in Atlanta and an extraordinary concentration of rail systems, trucking companies, warehouse and distribution centers, Atlanta’s logistics infrastructure and capabilities are unrivaled.
According to Harvard’s Institute on Strategy & Competitiveness, the Harvard cluster think-tank led by Michael E. Porter, “metro Atlanta’s employment in logistics has tripled in the last decade and boasts one of the highest logistics growth rates in the country.”
The Airport
Atlanta is home to not only the world’s busiest airport, but also the most efficient. Over 85 million passengers pass through Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport each year. It is the number one reason businesses relocate to Atlanta and is a major economic engine for the Atlanta region. There are over 105,000 airport related jobs in metro Atlanta. It’s the City’s goal to increase this to 129,000 jobs by 2009. In fact, passenger and air cargo activity at Hartsfield-Jackson generates $18.8 billion of business revenue annually to firms providing services at the Airport and to local visitor industry firms. And we’re just getting started.
In 2004, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport set a new international air cargo tonnage record with 349,000 metric tons of international cargo passing through our city. The tonnage increase broke our previous record, set in 2003 for international cargo tonnage, by more than 66,000 metric tons. A 23 percent increase!!! This is the single largest increase in international air cargo tonnage in the history of the airport. In fact, you would have to go back to 1997 for a year with similar single year increases (47,000 metric ton increase). That year, we handled only 211,000 metric tons of international air cargo.
Here are some of Hartsfield-Jackson’s most recent accomplishments:
- The 5th runway is on schedule and budget, opening in May, 2006.
- We constructed more than 1 million SF of cargo ramp space, which will accommodate 9 Boeing 747-400s simultaneously,
- We added 375,000 SF of modern air cargo handling space,
- We now have 80 flights per week to Latin America, and I must add we are not only looking to take advantage of the free trade agreements with Latin America, Atlanta wants to be the home for the Secretariat of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, and
- We have 32 flights per week to Asia; in fact, 22 of these flights are providing wide-body, all-cargo service. Air carriers such as: China Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Eva Airways, Korean Airlines, Polar Cargo, and Japan Airlines are providing service and jobs to the local economy.
- Today, we have almost 40 international all-cargo flights per week.
For more information about the airport or logistics, visit www.logisticsatlanta.com. For confidential logistics site selection and relocation assistance, please contact Bob Pertierra, VP Logistics Industry Development at 404.586.8445 or bpertierra@macoc.com.
The Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech has provided comprehensive
research and educational programs focuses on total optimization of the logistics
value chain. For more information call 404.894.2343.
Source: Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce
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Atlanta ranks #2 among Expansion Management magazine's "America's Hottest Cities" for Business Expansion and Relocation (2005)
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