News / DSV eyes more controlled air capacity and M&A opportunities

Photo: DSV

DSV is eyeing more controlled air capacity, as the freighter market tightens with delays to widebody deliveries.

Pointing to the forwarder’s August wet-lease deal with Atlas Air for a 777F, Stefan Krikken, global head of airfreight, said DSV had become more interested in securing its own capacity since buying Panalpina, which famously had its own controlled network.

“Now with Schenker onboarding, there’s more long-term flying programmes, own-controlled capacity, which we market as our air direct service,” Mr Krikken told delegates at Tiaca’s ACF in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

“When you do these long-term capacity agreements, it’s driven by two things: one being that we need capacity for our customers. And we all know the outlook. There’s very limited capacity coming in because of the delays of Boeing and Airbus. There’s simply not enough capacity in the next four or five years. So what do you do? You secure your own capacity and then a wet lease, or a dry lease maybe in the future, is a way to go.

“The other thing is the advantage you have … it gives you that flexibility. And I think what we’ve seen in 2025, the speed of how, let’s say, that ecommerce shippers were able to shift their trade from the transpacific to the Far East and Latin America markets, it pretty much happened overnight.

“And that’s where you need to have a lot of ability to be agile and flexible. So, yes, we will continue to add more of our own controlled capacity to fill the gap we’re seeing in the years to come, as well as to have the ability to be more flexible.”

Mr Krikken said DSV would not be resting on its laurels, in terms of further growth, and with the Schenker integration nearly complete, it would be looking for further opportunities.

“Everything is going actually better than expected; we’re ahead of schedule. And as it looks now, by around the end of Q1 26, 80% of our business will be live. So it’s actually progressing quite nicely.

“This is not our first rodeo when it comes to integrations. It is the biggest one we’ve ever done.

“DSV has shown itself to be very, very good at integrations. So we are going to continue acquiring companies. I think even now, also with the Schenker volumes, the market share is still quite limited.”

But he added that the market should also expect to see organic growth in air freight.