The Covid-19 pandemic halted the constant global growth of third party logistics in 2020, dropping turnover by 3.3%. However, this value is not high, taking into account the general impact on the economy, mitigated by a recovery in the last period of the year. A phenomenon that should continue also in 2021. This was stated by the Covid Recovery Tracker survey by TransportIntelligence, according to which at the end of this year the contract logistics market will grow by 6.5% over 2020, thus marking an increase of 2.9% even compared to 2019.
According to the research, logistics benefited during the pandemic from two phenomena that attenuated the contraction and that laid the foundations for this year's relaunch. The first concerns the closure strategies implemented by many countries to reduce health risks without stopping economic activity. Thus, most of the factory closures implemented in the first half of 2020 were not repeated in the second half, so the logistics companies continued to provide their services.
The second phenomenon is that demand, although compressed, continues to stimulate the economy. The confinement of people and policies to keep unemployment low have increased private savings, so when production and trade activities are gradually reopened, the consumption of goods has also resumed, to the detriment of those of services such as tourism, culture. or the show. This reorientation has favored the activities that move goods.
The expansion of vaccinations should favor economic recovery and therefore also push third party logistics, even with the return of some private resources to services closed during the pandemic. However, TransportIntelligence analysts predict that the recovery will not be homogeneous globally. Europe is expected to return to 2019 levels, while Asia Pacific is expected to achieve a significant increase.
In all cases, the pandemic should not stop the increase in logistics outsourcing. “At a time when many companies are experiencing liquidity shortages, freeing up capital and focusing on their skills by taking logistics off the balance sheet can be an attractive proposition,” say the researchers. In addition, the memory of logistical assets that are stopped or underutilized during confinement is still fresh and this is a further boost to outsourcing.
Source: TrasportoEuropa
