Originally Posted by
CabinCrewe
Fed Ex or DHL or Amazon? Could consolidate all their Scottish airfreight at that site.
Originally Posted by southsidebobby
Consolidate?...How big an operation do the big three mentioned have in Scotland?
Currently, not really big enough to warrant consolidation. I think DHL have a 757 at EDI and Fedex an ASL 737 at EDI and ATR42 at GLA. Not sure about Amazon, but they might use some of the capacity of the West Air 737s at EDI. DHL and Fedex seek to transport low-volume high-value packages to and from mainly businesses quickly, so it makes sense for them to maximise the length of the quick bit of the journey (flying) and minimise the length of the slow bit of the journey (road transport). I would imagine that in Central Scotland the bulk of their business is from companies located in or adjoining the M8/M9/M80 triangle and EDI is perfectly located for them at one of the vertexes of that triangle. I'm not sure that moving to an airport about a 45-minute drive from another vertex of that triangle would be a great move. As for Amazon, their two current Scottish distribution centres are in Dunfermline and Greenock about 90 and 60-minute drives from PIK respectively. So again, PIK isn't particularly well-suited for either of their locations. (Although the Royal Mail have run a West Air 737/ATP into PIK on weekday mornings during the pandemic, so clearly they think it usefully-located).
That said, given the projected growth in online commerce, I suppose it's plausible that one of them would be interested in operating from an airport where they would have space to build a bespoke facility which would be the case at PIK, but perhaps not at GLA or EDI. Whether they would be interested enough to buy it though is another matter - I'm not sure any of them own any other airports outright?
Anyway, I'm not sure any of those three meet the definition of "
huge European transport firm" referred to in the article (DHL might I suppose, and perhaps there's a Europe-incorporated entity of Amazon or Fedex that would too). Given the Scottish Government went through a procurement process to identify the preferred bidder, presumably they would, in the first instance, seek to sell it to a party that was involved in that process. The Scotsman reported that, after the Expression of Interest stage, Vinci and a foreign consortium (https://www.scotsman.com/news/transp...-group-1399214) were invited to bid (along with the then-preferred bidder). If the 'huge European transport firm' referred to in the Daily Record article isn't Vinci (who would qualify for that description) or the foreign consortium then why did this huge firm not bid during the sale process?
In 2018 The Times reported that 20 firms had expressed an interest in buying PIK (
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c...fers-mfkw2fxm2) since it was sold by Infratil, yet nobody has successfully concluded a sale. I'd love to be proven wrong but can't help thinking that this 'huge European transport firm' might end up being another to add to that list.