SATS-owned Worldwide Flight Services has opened a 25,400 sq m cargo terminal at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport, consolidating its Lyon operations into a single site that becomes the handler's second-largest operation in France after Paris Charles de Gaulle.

The Aéroport de Lyon DC1 facility sits in the airport's Cargoport zone and connects directly to the runways. WFS first began operations in Lyon in 1971.

Laurent Bernard, vice-president of WFS France, called the building "a new milestone" for the company in the city. "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," Bernard said.

What does the terminal contain?

• 4,400 sq m of cold rooms for specialised and sensitive cargo
• Storage capacity suited to perishable products
• 36 door docks for imports and exports, five of them dedicated to airfreight pallet transfers
• A layout designed to optimise flows between landside access, handling areas and airside operations

The facility serves all 380 WFS customers in the Lyon area and targets demanding sectors including healthcare, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology — industries concentrated heavily in the Lyon region.

Who built it, and to what standard?

Four partners delivered the project: Aéroports de Lyon, WFS, logistics real estate developer Prologis, and the em2c Group, which handled design, build and technology oversight.

Environmental standards were built in from the design stage. The hub targets a 'Very Good' BREEAM rating, and its roof is solar-ready, engineered to take a future photovoltaic installation.

Vincent Sadé, vice president, head of capital deployment France at Prologis, said the project shows how the developer's business is evolving: "Beyond the building itself, we design infrastructure that is directly integrated into our customers' operations."

Sadé added: "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."

Yvan Patet, president of the em2c Group, said the 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".

Why Lyon?

Cedric Fechter, chairman of the management board of Aéroports de Lyon, said the facility marks the continued expansion of Cargoport, the freight zone at Lyon-Saint Exupéry and France's second-largest air cargo hub. He described the project as the work of close collaboration between Prologis, em2c, WFS and Aéroports de Lyon, one that "significantly strengthens the competitiveness of the region".

Bernard framed the opening in network terms: "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."

With pharma-grade cold-chain capacity now centralised at a single airside-connected site, WFS has positioned its Lyon operation to compete for temperature-sensitive freight moving through France's second-largest cargo hub — and, if the BREEAM rating and rooftop solar are realised, to do so with documented sustainability credentials.