According to ReportsnReports latest study: Global and China Third-party Logistics Industry Report, 2016-2020, third-party logistics can not only help companies complete cargo movement but effectively reduce logistics costs and speed up cargo turnover, fully meeting their requirements on logistics quality. Therefore, third-party logistics develops rapidly. In 2015, global third-party logistics market size hit US$721 billion, a YoY rise of 4.5 percent, occupying 8.2 percent of the logistics market size, and increased around US$35.9 billion in 2016, up to US$756.9 billion. In the future, by virtue of high efficiency and highly standardized operation, the third-party logistics market size will grow steadily, expectedly outstripping US$900 billion in 2020, with a share of nearly 10.0 percent in the logistics market size.
China is the world’s largest third-party logistics market. In 2015, its market size attained RMB1,065.2 billion or roughly US$171.8 billion (up 13.6 percent year on year), a 23.8 percent share in global market, and reached around RMB1,200 billion in 2016. Chinese (Mainland China) third-party logistics industry is still in its infancy, and lags behind the developed countries/regions by share in the whole logistic market (developed regions generally above 10.5 percent, Mainland China around 8.0 percent), leaving a large development space. Moreover, China’s regional trade imbalance also creates certain opportunities for the rapid development of third-party logistics. It is predicted that third-party logistics market size in China will see a CAGR of around 15.0 percent in 2016-2020.
Additionally with not a high market share, Chinese third-party logistics industry also has problems of insufficient demand and low-level demand at present, respectively due to relatively little use of third-party logistics by most traditional companies, and basic and conventional demand of companies which choose third-party logistics and their small demand for high value-added, comprehensive logistics service.
Development trend: to improve profitability and maximize operational efficiency, third-party logistics is heading towards largescale, informatization, asset-light and platform. In addition, as E-commerce in China gradually spreads to regions outside the first tier cities, third-party logistics companies make layout in the second- and third-tier cities accordingly.
Seen from competitive landscape, third-party logistics market has a low concentration rate, and the players compete fiercely. In 2015, CR10 of global third-party logistics industry was less than 20.0 percent, of which DHL Supply Chain & Global Forwarding with the largest market size only saw 4.1 percent; Sinotrans, China’s largest third-party logistics company, ranking eighth in the world, only witnessed a market share of 1.0 percent.
