Dubai World Central, the world's first purpose-built aerotropolis, has announced the opening of Phase II of Kuehne + Nagel's logistics centre at DWC's Logistics City.

Hamburg Airport has begun construction on its new Hamburg Airport Cargo Center (HACC). Modern facilities on Weg beim Jaeger will replace the existing air cargo center. The new facility will be 60,000 square meters (645,834 square feet) and will open in summer 2015.

The airfreight operations of Emirates Airlines is on track for its move to Dubai World Central (DWC) with the first phase of the building being finished.

The Stifel Logistics Confidence Index entered 2014 on a positive note. Despite a month-to-month 0.9 point decline in the overall Index reading to 56.6, the Logistics Confidence Index has remained above the 50-level for 12 months, meaning the market continues to exhibit a healthy confidence in air and sea freight forwarding. To get a better view of global air and ocean trade, Stifel has partnered with Transport Intelligence to create the Stifel Logistics Confidence Index (LCI), a monthly survey of international shippers and forwarders that measures freight activity across several European-based trade lanes.

For 2013, airlines are expected to return a global net profit of $12.9bn. This is expected to lead to a net profit of $19.7bn in 2014. Both are improvements on previous months. The upward revision reflects lower jet fuel prices over the forecast period as well as improvements to the industry's structure and efficiency. Passenger markets continue to outperform the cargo business, which remains stagnant both on volumes and revenues.

Lufthansa Cargo is now offering customers real-time consignment tracking, through the use of GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) transponders.

DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight unit within Deutsche Post DHL, has broken ground on a $35m facility at O'Hare International Airport, which will include 53,000 square feet of office space and 423,030 square feet of warehousing, and is expected to be the largest DHL Global Forwarding building in the U.S.