Turkish Cargo has announced the opening of its new storage area of 10,500 sq m at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, saying it has become one of the fastest growing players in the global air cargo industry with investments going on without deceleration.

The new facility was inaugurated on September 18 at a ceremony where the chairman of the Turkish Airlines board, Hamdi Topcu, and CEO of the airline, Temel Kotil, took part.

The storage area, built at the end of runway 06/24 of Ataturk International Airport, will play an important role in the growth of Turkish Airline’s cargo operations, a statement from the airline said.

The new facility has storage for 333 ULDs (unit load devices) as well as space of 1,000 sq m for handling mail. Other features are a a 700 sq m of cold weather storage space and five cold storage spaces of which two spaces cater for temperatures between 2 deg C and 8 deg C, another two for 15 deg C to 25 deg C and one has adjustable temperature settings.

There is also capacity for 56 ULDs in cold store. The entire cold storage area has independent power generation in case of black outs, providing secure facilities even in abnormal situations.

Meanwhile, Turkish Cargo launched recently Singapore cargo flights, one a week, on the Istanbul-Karachi-Singapore-Karachi-Istanbul (IST-KHI-SIN-KHI-IST) route.

The airline’s freighter network now reaches a total of 47 international destinations.