News / You need agility and flexibility to be a winner in forwarding today, says DSV

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“Dark horse” DSV will continue to grow and target market share, as the freight forwarding market still leaves “a lot of room for consolidation”, delegates at the Caspian Air Cargo Summit in Baku heard yesterday. 

“We’ve gone through organic growth, but we’re more known for inorganic growth,” said its head of airfreight, Stefan Krikken. 

“Over the past years we’ve been quite successful when it comes to acquiring other logistics companies and integrating them at a fast pace,” he said – indeed, Mr Krikken himself was integrated into the forwarding giant through its acquisition of Panalpina in 2019. 

“Recently Schenker was acquired by DSV, making it the largest overseas provider in the world. When it comes to air freight, we move around 2.4m tons of cargo globally, so that’s quite the size. As you can imagine, we’re quite busy now when it comes to integrating Schenker into the organisation.” 

According to him, the increased market consolidation in freight forwarding is due to “a very diverse landscape”. 

“Even with the latest acquisition of Schenker, DSV only has a 9% or 10% market share. So, there’s a lot of room to consolidate,” he said. 

Not only was he referring to DSV’s ambitions, but Mr Krikken added that the fragmented industry meant there was also “a lot of room for other players” to pursue M&A opportunities.  

“So, I think we will see more consolidation in the forwarding industry,” he predicted, and underscored the importance of agility in this fast-evolving landscape. 

“With what has happened the past couple of months, with the tariffs in the US… as long as we’re agile, and as long as we continue to be dynamic, we’re going to be fine in this turbulent new market,” he said. 

“We have to strategically think ‘how do we procure capacity, with whom do we procure capacity, what is the form of capacity that we procure? Be it in the commercial market, through gateways, through our own controlled network, long-term agreements or ACMIs?’ We have to find the right balance.” 

And while he noted that DSV was already a top-three providers when it comes to volume in ocean freight, he revealed that it had ambitions to continue growing its global footprint “through organic as well as inorganic growth”. 

“If you want to be the dark horse, if you want to be the winner in this dynamic environment, you have to make sure you are the most agile and the most flexible; that you hedge your bets,” said Mr Krikken.