United Parcel Service (UPS) has announced that it is adding a new sorting facility to its existing building at Ontario International Airport in CA in response to rising customer demand.

The new facility will process urgent, time definite UPS Next Day Air packages and it will also have automated sorting capabilities. The sorting facility will be retrofitted with automated sorting systems and it should double the package processing capacity.

In a statement issued yesterday (22 March), George Willis, president of UPS’s West Region, commented: “These investments in UPS’s air and ground network illustrate UPS’s commitment to customers in the Inland Empire and abroad, and are part of an ongoing, network-wide investment the company continues to make in hub expansion and automation.

“We are expanding UPS’s integrated network to meet the needs of customers as they grow their businesses in the U.S. and around the world.”

The existing UPS ground sorting facility will have double the throughput when the expansion is completed. The building will increase in size by around 15% to around 900,000 square feet.

The facility will sort packages originating from and destined for areas in and around the “Inland Empire” (a term used to describe the region in southern California which encompasses the cities of western Riverside County and south western San Bernardino County).

Currently, UPS flies 38 flights every day to and from the airport.

The expansion was “driven by recent growth in e-commerce and traditional retail businesses”.

It is expected that the company will add add over 500 new jobs at this location over the next five years and will start hiring in 2018. Jobs will include delivery drivers and part-time package handlers.

The construction of the air sorting facility was completed in September 2015 and the expansion of the existing ground sorting building and addition of new automation technologies is currently underway.