Worldwide Flight Services (WFS), a SATS company, has opened a 25,400 m² cargo terminal at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport (LYS), consolidating its Lyon operations into a single site and becoming the handler's second-largest operation in France after Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The Aéroport de Lyon DC1 facility sits at the centre of the airport's Cargoport zone — France's second-largest air cargo hub — and connects directly to the airport's runways. Aéroports de Lyon, WFS, Prologis and the em2c Group, which handled design, build and technological oversight, developed the project jointly.

The terminal supports all 380 WFS customers in the Lyon area and is expected to sustain more than 300 direct and indirect jobs locally.

Its technical specification targets high-value and temperature-sensitive traffic. The building contains 4,400 m² of cold rooms for specialised and sensitive cargo, including perishables capacity, and 36 door docks for import and export handling — five of them dedicated to air freight pallet transfers. WFS designed the layout to optimise flows between landside access points, handling areas and airside operations.

The configuration responds to the concentration of healthcare, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the Lyon region, sectors with demanding cold-chain requirements.

Environmental performance was built in from the design stage. The facility targets a 'Very Good' BREEAM rating and its roof is engineered to accommodate a future photovoltaic installation.

"Aéroport de Lyon DC1 represents a new milestone for WFS in Lyon, where we first commenced operations in 1971. Its design, temperature-controlled areas, and organisation of cargo flows enable us to strengthen our capacity and operational efficiency to handle sensitive and high value goods for our airline and freight forwarder customers. Given Lyon's strategically important location, industrial base, and high-value economic sectors, this new generation of logistics infrastructure reinforces Lyon's position in national and European logistics flows and will strengthen the economic attractiveness of the region," said Laurent Bernard, Vice-President of WFS France.

For the developer, the project reflects a shift in how logistics real estate serves air cargo operators. "Aéroport de Lyon DC1 illustrates how our business is evolving: beyond the building itself, we design infrastructure that is directly integrated into our customers' operations. Our role was to align the specific constraints of the airport environment, real estate requirements and WFS's operational needs to create a tailored, high-performing solution built to last," said Vincent Sadé, Vice President, Head of Capital Deployment France, Prologis.

Yvan Patet, President of the em2c Group, emphasised the environmental dimension. "The Aéroport de Lyon DC1 project stems from a shared vision among regional and international partners driven by a desire to strengthen the region by incorporating environmental performance from the construction phase onwards. This facility provides a solution tailored to the specific requirements of air freight," he said.

Cedric Fechter, Chairman of the Management Board of Aéroports de Lyon, framed the terminal as part of a broader expansion of the Cargoport freight zone. "The Aéroport de Lyon DC1 facility marks the continued expansion of Cargoport, the freight zone at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport and France's second largest air cargo hub. The result of close collaboration between Prologis, the em2c Group, WFS and Aeroports de Lyon, this project epitomises regional supply chain and significantly strengthens the competitiveness of the region," Fechter said.

The Lyon opening is the latest new-build cargo terminal in the combined SATS and WFS global network, which operates more than 215 stations across 27 countries covering trade routes responsible for over 50 percent of global air cargo volume. WFS has served Lyon since 1971, and the new facility consolidates those five decades of operations into purpose-built infrastructure sized for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and perishables traffic.