Vanderlande Industries has won the contract to supply a new baggage handling system for Brazil’s São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. This is the country’s busiest airport, handling almost 33 million passengers in 2012, with ambitious growth plans to take that number up to 60 million by 2022. Work on-site will start in August 2013 and the project is scheduled to be completed in April 2014, in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil.

The order was awarded to Vanderlande Industries by Consórcio Invepar-ACSA, comprising Brazilian infrastructure investor Invepar and Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), which has obtained a 20-year concession to operate the airport. The consortium chose Vanderlande Industries because of the company’s proven track record with baggage handling projects in Brazil as well as other countries in South America.

Local presence in Brazil
This new order underlines Vanderlande Industries’ strong focus on long-term customer partnerships, with a shared commitment to continuous performance improvement and cost optimisation. This is especially relevant in strong growth markets such as Brazil, where airports are faced with constantly increasing demands in terms of both capacity and performance.

To ensure optimum response to airport needs, Vanderlande has a local presence in Brazil, with a base in São Paulo. It has strong links with local partners for system installation and operation, together with its own service and maintenance team.

Full system redundancy ensures uninterrupted operations
The new baggage handling system will have three check-in islands with 72 check-in positions and one re check-in for transfer passengers. Sorting of baggage is by 2 HELIXORTER tilt tray sorters with 24 destinations. Full system redundancy ensures uninterrupted operations can continue in case of any fault or during routine maintenance.

Early baggage arrivals are handled by a lane-based Early Bag Store with 1,000 positions and 500 manual storage positions, allowing bags to be called forward rapidly when needed for flight make-up. Security screening meets the latest standards with five Level 1 and two Level 3 screening machines. Arrivals bags are handled by seven tilted TRIPLANAR carousels. Overall control is by Vanderlande’s integrated VIBES software suite offering full operational management, process control and performance reporting functions.