Amazon is to open a new ‘air gateway’ and package sorting operation in Wilmington Air Park in Ohio, according to local media reports.

According to Amazon, it rents space at airports for loading and unloading of packages into the aircraft from trucks and also requires an on-site sort area for sending packages to their destination. Amazon refers to these as “air gateways.”

“Amazon is growing its investment in the community with a gateway for their Amazon Air planes at the Wilmington Air Park as it continues to build out its air hub operation at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG),” the company said in a statement.

A company announcement also said:

“We are excited to bring our Amazon Air operation to KILN (Wilmington Air Park) while we continue building out our central air hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport,” said Sarah Rhoads, director of Amazon Air. “We are opening an operation in Wilmington to ensure we have the capacity to continue to delight our customers.”

Long rumoured but patchily announced by the firm, Amazon has been quietly building its air operations firstly in the US and latterly in Europe as part of its wider AML logistics business. With its offering to Amazon FBA clients this is a business that could compete in sheer size with the retail operation, though both are relatively small compared to its cloud computing operation that has led there way in making it possibly only the second company in the world to reach a value of $1 trillion.