Martin Placek
Research expert covering transportation and electronics
The logistics industry facilitates the trade entrepreneurial activities between two or more parties by transporting, storing, and delivering goods through B2B, B2C, or C2C supply chain networks. At the present time, logistics companies implement cargo transportation services by land, air, and water while adapting to the changing nature of economic patterns and digitization. As one of the backbones of international trade, the logistics industry worldwide was worth over 8.4 trillion euros in 2021 and is expected to exceed 13.7 billion euros by 2027. Correspondingly, global total logistics costs soared to nine trillion U. S. dollars in 2020. That represents 10.7 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 85.24 trillion U. S. dollars that year.
The Asia-Pacific logistics market is the largest in the world, with a market size worth about 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020 alone. The leading position of the region is attributed to the expansion of trade routes and the shift of industrial production to Asian countries. For instance, container trade flow within Asia was larger than any trade lane in the world, amounting to a volume of 41.5 million TEUs in 2021.
The Asia-Pacific logistics market is the largest in the world, with a market size worth about 3.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020 alone. The leading position of the region is attributed to the expansion of trade routes and the shift of industrial production to Asian countries. For instance, container trade flow within Asia was larger than any trade lane in the world, amounting to a volume of 41.5 million TEUs in 2021.
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on freight logistics
The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 directly and severely hit the worldwide transportation and logistics industry as international trade plunged during the year. However, most companies recovered sharply to pre-pandemic levels as consumer demand increased a year later. Worldwide air freight logistics traffic amounted to 65.6 million metric tons in 2021 and is projected to add up to 68.4 billion metric tons in 2022. FedEx, UPS, and Qatar Airways are the leading air freight carriers based on international and domestic freight metric ton-kilometers. Global maritime shipping was hit by supply chain disruptions, as evidenced by the decreased seaborne trade transport volume of 10.65 billion metric tons in 2020. Interestingly, the international maritime trade carried by container ships stayed unchanged compared to the pre-pandemic period, amounting to 1.85 billion metric tons loaded in 2020. Rail freight traffic worldwide presented a considerable decrease to about 10.87 trillion metric ton-kilometers in 2020, except in Africa, where there was a slight drop of only 0.2 percent in freight activity.Freight forwarding and e-commerce logistics market development
With a market size of 192.5 billion euros in 2021, global freight forwarding provides the logistics industry with quicker and easier solutions to the transportation process. DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, DSV, and DB Schenker are the leading companies in the global freight forwarding market. Specifically, Kuehne + Nagel, Sinotrans, and DHL were the world’s top three ocean freight forwarders by ocean freight volume in the twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEUs). As an essential part of the e-commerce business, logistics is responsible for planning, controlling, and moving goods from their origin to end users. Driven by the rise of the global e-commerce industry and the consequent growth of intra-regional and cross-border trade, the global e-commerce logistics market reached 441 billion euros in 2021. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity for more e-commerce logistics investment. The surge in e-commerce sales has aided two U. S. shipping giants, UPS Inc. and FedEx Corp., to seize their positions as the world's leading freight carriers in 2021, each with freight revenues of more than 70 billion U.S. dollars. However, dramatic developments on a global scale in 2022, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, inflation, and supply chain shocks are pointing at a global recession and forcing a slowdown in the performance of many major e-commerce companies and the associated logistics market.
