News / LX Pantos and Sinotrans launch sea-air JV targeting ecommerce

Photo: © Chengusf

China’s largest 3PL company, Sinotrans, has formed a joint-venture with South Korean 3PL LX Pantos.

Inked in Sinotrans’ Beijing headquarters on Thursday, the JV, FutureLinks, is targeting the expanding sea-air multimodal transport market, leveraging ecommerce cargo from China and Incheon International Airport’s (ICN) position as a key logistics hub in North-east Asia.

LX Pantos owns 60% of FutureLinks, with Sinotrans taking the other 40%.

In terms of ocean freight, Sinotrans is said to be the world’s largest, having handled 4.87m teu in 2024.

FutureLinks will establish a transshipment network centred on the Incheon-Weihai (Shandong Province) route, one of the key logistics corridors between South Korea and China, offering integrated door-to-door logistics services across major global consumption markets, including North America and Europe.

The business model involves shipping containers from across China to South Korean ports, followed by air transport from ICN to destinations worldwide.

LX Pantos said: “As China’s domestic air logistics capacity struggles to keep pace with surging ecommerce demand, Incheon has rapidly gained strategic importance as a primary transhipment hub.”

With its close geographic proximity to China and a network linking nearly 200 global destinations, ICN offers a highly competitive base for sea-air multimodal operations.

LX Pantos CEO Lee Yong-ho said: “This collaboration marks a new growth model to pre-empt the north-east Asia transhipment market and the culmination of a long-standing strategic partnership between our two companies. In addition, the surging influx of ecommerce cargo flows from China is highly expected to further strengthen the competitiveness of South Korea’s logistics industry.”

ICN handled 118,000 tonnes of multimodal cargo last year, up 20% from 2023, and last week Airzeta, a new Korean cargo airline, announced it had selected Vienna (VIE) as its European hub

Airzeta, which emerged following the merger of Asiana and Korean Air, is offering six weekly 747F frequencies between ICN and VIE, with shipments expected to include auto parts and battery materials, high-value industrial components, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and ecommerce .

ICN has been targeting more air freight, particularly multimodal, as South Korea’s economy matures. The airport has been reaching out to more airline partners to develop cargo links. Direct cargo flights from South-east Asia and India to the US are unviable due to distance. As a result, many cargo airlines, including CMA CGM and Cargolux, have been using ICN as a transhipment hub for their freighters to and from South-east Asia.

To support its airline partners, ICN expanded its hourly slots to 75 in 2024, with priority given to cargo flights.