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Minnesota 3PL CH Robinson now looks to Asia-Europe trade lane growth

A LEADING third-party logistics provider headquartered in Minnesota, US, CH Robinson has made the development of traffic on Asia-Europe trade lanes a strategic priority, representing a significant departure from its traditional focus on routes to and from North America.

The Nasdaq-listed logistics group has recorded "accelerated growth" in the European region over the past three years, which has seen the number of its network branch offices increasing from 34 to 52 and a doubling of the workforce to over 1,000 employees.

In an interview with Lloyd's Loading List, the group's director for Global Forwarding in Europe, Ivo Aris, explained that growth had been in all areas of the business across Europe and especially in air and ocean freight exports.

"Historically, CH Robinson has been very strong on transatlantic (US-Europe) trade lanes but in addition, since 2014, we have enjoyed rapid growth on Europe-India routes and, little by little, are becoming one of the market leaders," he said.

"This year, we've targeted the development of Asia-Europe traffic. We have already seen our volumes increase rapidly, especially on the China trade lane and are now looking to accelerate growth.

"Customers on other trade lanes have a huge amount of business on Asia-Europe routes, which we are hoping will come our way. Clear time-definite targets have been set, per mode of transport, for both inbound and outbound traffic," Mr Aris said.

Last month, in order to "to support an increasing need for transportation services between Europe and Asia", CH Robinson announced it was adding two positions to its global forwarding team.

Oliver Volk was appointed director of European development, Asia Global Forwarding and Rajendra Tamil to the post of route development manager Asia, Europe Global Forwarding. Mr Volk is based in Shanghai and Mr Tamil in Paris.

"Their brief, primarily, is to generate growth in air and ocean shipments from Asia to Europe, and being located at both ends of the trade lane, so to speak, they can better co-ordinate sales activities and initiatives," Mr Aris said.

He played down the suggestion that the task had been made more difficult by the economic slowdown in China. "Macro-economic developments impact everyone to a certain extent, but we believe we have the service offering and people that will allow us to meet our growth objectives whatever the broader context."