GROTTAGLIE – Not just a spaceport. Grottaglie airport is also preparing to host a hub for cargo flights and the “dismantling” industry, which will be the first Italian aircraft dismantling center for the recycling of materials. In recent months, work has been carried out on several construction sites inside the «Marcello Arlotta» enclosure. Contracts which, overall, develop a round of investments in the area of around 200 million euros. Grottaglie, in the plans of Aeroporti di Puglia and the Region which is among its main shareholders, is a candidate to truly become the airport of the future.
Yesterday morning the president of Aeroporti di Puglia, Antonio Maria Vasile, carried out an inspection of the airport construction sites, open to citizens for the occasion. Teams of workers are working on the modernization and redevelopment of the passenger terminal. The most futuristic project is certainly that of the spaceport. It will consist of a hangar, a structure with a surface area of approximately 8,000 m2, suitable for accommodating an aircraft of the caliber of the Boeing 747-8. In front of this structure, there is the large aircraft apron, which occupies a total area of approximately 4,800 m2. The multipurpose building will be built next to the hangar and will house a museum, a research center and a start-up incubator. The hangar and multipurpose center will be connected by a tunnel designed by two star architects.
«Aeroporti di Puglia today – explains its president Antonio Maria Vasile – is the fifth Italian group in the sector. Here the work has been planned until 2035. It is an overall project across all the airports in the region with a very specific objective: to attract international markets. By 2027, thanks to targeted investments, we will have a very high quality system that starts in Foggia and ends in Grottaglie, passing through Bari and Brindisi. And to do this we decided to push hard on infrastructure.”
Grottaglie is an airport with a strong industrial vocation. And it is no coincidence that a giant like «Leonardo» has decided to operate right here with one of its flagship factories which today, in addition to assembling the fuselages of the «Dreamliner 787», also works on drone projects. «In Grottaglie we are writing the future. We designed it and we are building it – says Vasile -. This facility will represent the national outpost for the flights of the future. Suborbital flights are not just a visionary bet, but a reality capable of generating investments and jobs. Probably in 10 years the traditional aircraft, the one we know today, will perhaps no longer exist. And then Grottaglie will be the first hub ready for innovation. The Puglia Region has pushed hard for this to happen here.”
A chain of investments that also wink at the markets of the East. «The cargo project is already well underway – adds Vasile -. All agricultural goods from Puglia destined for the world will pass through Grottaglie. Everything that can be transported by air will pass through here. Until some time ago, air transport was very expensive, today this cost becomes more bearable also because geopolitical crises limit the ship transport system”.
But Grottaglie, the first port of call in Italy, is also open to sustainability. In fact, the first Italian “dismantling” center is being created here, that is, dismantling, dismantling and recycling of aircraft that have now reached the end of their life. Objective: recover and reuse a share of no less than 85-90% of aircraft, including marketing of spare parts and recycling of materials. This is a private investment of approximately 16 million euros which will affect a total area of over 18 thousand square meters in the Ionian airport. Here the construction of a hangar, 80 meters long and 82 meters wide, is planned, in which the individual planes will be dismantled and “regenerated”. «We will dismantle and recover very expensive engines and aerial parts and we will have the possibility, thanks to the cargo platform, to ship them around the world, reducing times. Grottaglie – concludes the president of Aeroporti di Puglia – is truly already traveling into the future”.
