San Francisco International Airport is quietly ripping up the playbook on air freight, trading low-slung sheds for a new kind of warehouse that goes vertical and leans hard on automation. Instead of spreading pallets across acres of concrete, the airport is moving toward high-bay storage, robots and on-site power systems that pack more cargo into the same footprint while cutting overnight emissions. For Bay Area shippers and airport workers, it is a shift toward cargo operations that look a lot more like major e-commerce hubs than old-school freight sheds.
Skanska Breaks Ground At SFO
Skanska is building a new cargo facility and a separate ground-service-equipment maintenance shop at San Francisco International Airport, adding roughly 120,000 square feet of cargo and mezzanine office space plus a 17,000-square-foot GSE facility, according to a press release by Skanska. The project is being delivered using a design-build approach with Woods Bagot as the architect and is expected to wrap up in early 2028. “We are proud to partner with SFO on this vital redevelopment,” the company said.
Why Vertical Makes Sense
Instead of sprawling, single-story buildings, modern air cargo hubs are increasingly going vertical with high-bay terminals that stack unit-load devices and pallets in dense, multi-story racks. Automation providers already design automated storage and retrieval systems that can extend to roughly 40 meters (about 130 feet), showing how tall structures can boost capacity without expanding an airport’s footprint, per Daifuku. For space-constrained airports like SFO, that kind of density is a practical answer to growing cargo demand.
Robots, Sensors And Precision
Inside these tall racks, autonomous mobile robots and self-driving forklifts use LiDAR, 3D cameras and onboard AI to find, dock and move pallets with a high degree of reliability. A technical review in Electronics (MDPI) details how these sensor suites and navigation systems allow AMRs and autonomous forklifts to operate safely in busy, mixed-traffic environments. That level of autonomy cuts down on some manual handling while raising the complexity of how the facilities are designed, operated and maintained.
Design Details To Watch
The new generation of cargo hubs blends robotics with very specific infrastructure choices: high-strength, super-flat concrete floors designed to support automated storage systems, automated transfer vehicles that shuttle unit-load devices between storage positions, digital twins used to simulate operations before they go live and refrigerated zones that can maintain cold temperatures for hours even without active power. Those design elements are outlined in an industry feature by Biz Journals, which notes that these aviation facilities are borrowing proven tactics from advanced warehouses to meet air cargo requirements. Together, those choices are meant to speed cargo turn times and reduce manual handling of temperature-sensitive shipments.
Powering The Night Shift
To keep electric ground service equipment and chargers humming through the night, many airport projects now pair rooftop and canopy solar with industrial-scale battery storage and microgrids. A National Academies report has identified microgrids as a practical tool for airports that want resilience while electrifying operations, and Skanska’s release states that the SFO project will include photovoltaic panels and battery storage to support future tenants. On-site generation and storage help smooth energy demand spikes and make overnight electrification both economically and operationally workable.
What It Means Locally
SFO already hosts a network of cargo handlers, cool-chain operations and airline freight stations, and the new facility is intended to consolidate and modernize that activity, according to San Francisco International Airport’s cargo listings. Faster cargo handling and more reliable cold storage could give Bay Area exporters, from fresh produce suppliers to biotech manufacturers, tighter shipping windows and less spoilage risk. Once the building is operational, hiring is likely to tilt more toward technicians, robotics maintainers and electricians alongside traditional ramp and trucking roles.
Project planners say the blend of vertical racking, automation and on-site power can deliver more throughput on less land with a smaller emissions footprint, a combination that is becoming increasingly important at crowded coastal airports. The SFO project, scheduled for completion in early 2028, will be one of the first local tests of how well that model works at a major U.S. international gateway. If it performs as advertised, other airports are likely to explore similar builds as cargo growth, sustainability goals and electrification push logistics toward denser and smarter facilities.
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