MEMPHIS, Tenn. — FedEx officials cut the ribbon on the newest sorting facility at the Memphis hub Wednesday morning.

It’s part of a $1.5 billion investment called Secondary 25 that will modernize hub operations.

The facility, which is the second link in getting packages sorted and outbound, is fully automated. According to FedEx is able to sort 56,000 pieces per hour.  

“Ten years of tireless work by our team has made this state-of-the-art facility a reality,” said Richard Smith, COO International/ CEO FedEx Airline Division. “So today, we celebrate a giant step in our transformational journey toward realizing our vision to help customers compete and win the world’s most flexible, efficient and smartest logistics network.”

Even from the outside it’s still hard to appreciate how massive this facility is — 11.3 million square feet, as long as three football fields, with 11 miles of conveyor belt.

Sort times will be reduced through what’s called six-sided scanning to capture size and barcode information.

The new hub operations control center is three times larger than the previous control center.

“Not only will it run Secondary 25, this command center will now run this entire, massive hub operation here in Memphis,” said Lisa Lisson, President of Air Operations.

FedEx is taking a unique step to insure its Memphis operation stays running through severe weather by building its own power substation, which is under construction on Democrat Road north of the hub.     

“When we have an outage we have to reboot systems and that can intefere — costs, delays —with the sortation process,” said Camille Diggs, FedEx Communications Specialist.

The facility is called a critical milestone in the future of FedEx as a company, and while it’s officially Secondary 25, it’s also affectionately called The Captain.

The name is in honor of FedEx’s founder and executive chairman, “who created the overnight package and delivery service 51 years ago and changed the way the world does business,” Smith said.

FedEx says Secondary 25 is now fully operation ahead of the holiday peak season.