Aiming to capture a growing slice of the €3 billion outsourced Service Logistics market in Asia Pacific, DHL Supply Chain has announced plans to invest €50 million over the next five years to grow its Technical Services offering, part of its overall Service Logistics solution. DHL has also appointed an IT industry veteran to head this sector and opened its first technical services competency centre in Asia, co-located at its 200,000 sq ft Penang Logistics Hub in Malaysia offering integrated technical services from warehousing and distribution of spare parts, to reverse logistics including screening, testing, repair and asset recovery.

“By our estimates, the market is growing at about 25 per cent per annum,” said DHL Supply Chain, Asia Pacific CEO Paul Graham. “Of that, Service Logistics services, especially Technical Services and repairs accounts for up to 60 per cent of the overall spend. Our focus on this sector will be an industry game-changer. Harnessing the size and scale of our extensive footprint spanning 42 countries and territories in Asia Pacific, we have a unique opportunity to bridge the market gap between companies offering technical repairs and logistics providers.”

For geographically expansive markets like China and India, the focus is on growing DHL’s service logistics footprint. DHL operates from 400 sites in China and 470 locations in India. Of these, 15 per cent of DHL’s sites in China and 40 per cent of its facilities in India support service logistics.

“We expect to double the number and increase our service logistics footprint in China and India within the next 3-5 years. We are currently the market leader with the widest network in Tier 1 and Tier 2 markets, and we intend to further penetrate into Tier 3 to Tier 5 cities,” said Graham.

In Japan, DHL operates from a network of 270 sites of which approximately 20 per cent cater to service logistics. In Singapore, DHL currently operates a 24/7 call centre for Europe and the Asia Pacific region for service logistics. The company plans to launch an Asia Pacific Centre of Excellence for Solutions Development based in Singapore.