Power 25: Three to watch for next year
APEX logistics
Founded in 2003, privately-held, China-based APEX Logistics fell just short of making the Power 25 list this year – its 188,000 annual tonnes of airfreight places it at No. 26 on the list – but the young company plans to make a larger dent in the market in 2016. Michael Piza, senior vice president, corporate sales and marketing, said APEX expects burgeoning cross-border demand in Asia to fuel growth. APEX already manages all cross-border logistics into Asia for a couple major U.S.-retailers and has been successful via its ECMS Express service, which grew 800 percent in 2015. “Global business-to-consumer, cross-border e-commerce is going to be a key factor in the future of logistics,” Piza said. “We have been able to seamlessly move goods across the border and from door to door in the U.S. and other markets.”
DSV
Currently, DSV and UTi Worldwide are listed separately in the Power 25, because the merger between the two forwarders didn’t officially take place until the calendar year changed. But for the 2016 fiscal year, this blockbuster acquisition will place DSV just below rival C.H. Robinson in terms of size and add further distance between itself and competitors such as CEVA Logistics, Bolloré Group (SDV), XPO Logistics and Panalpina. The acquisition of UTi Worldwide will most directly benefit the DSV Air & Sea Division. DSV has solid freight forwarding operations and isexpected to turn the troubled UTi operations around. In 2014, DSV increased airfreight tonnage by 10.9 percent to 288,000. “Over the last couple of years we have seen our airfreight activities developing nicely,” said DSV CEO, Jens Bjørn Andersen. “The growth has been achieved across different industries, and with European and U.S. exports as the best performing trade lanes for DSV.”
UPS Supply Chain Solutions
UPS SCS is a “very solid value-added warehousing and distribution 3PL provider with a nice integrated small package and international transportation management offering,” Armstrong said. But since August 2015, when UPS bought Coyote Logistics for $1.8 billion, the 3PL arm of UPS gained a “significant non-asset based domestic transportation management capabilities” from Coyote in the U.S. The combination, he said, would make UPS SCS the ninth-largest 3PL provider globally. The question, Armstrong said, will be whether the cultures clash or complement each other. “UPS is an established ‘big brown machine’ and Coyote is a young, ‘work hard, play hard’ entrepreneurial company,” he said. “Hopefully, UPS will let Coyote flourish and won’t disrupt its culture.”
