UPS launches $196 million expansion of Jacksonville hub

Parcel delivery giant UPS Inc. is continuing to invest in expansion, announcing it will spend $196 million to increase the capacity of its Jacksonville ground package hub by one-third, the company said Friday.

The project will add more than 260,000 square feet to the building and install advanced technology and operations automation. Together, those upgrades will allow UPS to process more than 80,000 packages per hour when the system opens in the fall of 2019.

The announcement comes just a day after UPS said it would spend $400 million to build a 1.2-million-square-foot regional package-sorting hub in Atlanta. That facility is scheduled to go live at the end of 2018, when it will become the third largest in UPS' U.S. network behind Louisville, Ky., and Chicago.

The Jacksonville facility will be retrofitted with advanced sorting and processing automation tools. The changes will include:

• replacing traditional address label-scanning with six-sided address-label "decode tunnels"
• deploying high-speed UPS Smart Label applicators that place labels on packages to give employees instructions for proper routing and vehicle loading
• new systems to handle small, lightweight packages typical of e-commerce
• a larger staging area for onsite liquefied natural gas fueling for the UPS tractor fleet
• room for an additional 46 brown package car parcel delivery trucks for local delivery operations.

"Jacksonville is one of the larger U.S. ground processing facilities and an important transit point to connect road and rail in the UPS network," Kim Wyant, president of UPS's Florida District, said in a release. "We appreciate the state and local community support for the new technology and jobs that give UPS flexibility to meet growing needs of our customers."