Logistics & Transportation
Supply chain resilience, freight forwarding, cold chain infrastructure, and the reconfiguration reshaping global trade corridors.
The Resilience Pivot
Between 2022-2026, multinationals redirected $4.3 trillion toward nearshoring, friendshoring, and China-plus-one. Vietnam, India, Mexico, Morocco, Turkey are primary beneficiaries — but logistics infrastructure connecting these nodes remains dangerously immature. Leading shippers accept 5-12% higher freight costs as resilience premium and invest in digital control towers. Tariff regimes, sanctions, and export controls are first-order network design variables. The era of a single frictionless global supply chain is over.
Freight Forwarding & 3PL/4PL
The Oligopoly
DHL, Kuehne+Nagel, DSV-Panalpina (now including DB Schenker) control ~30% of the $220B market. Margins 4-7% net. Scale advantages decisive. GCC 4PL market projected $6B+ by 2028, driven by Vision 2030 logistics programmes.
The Flexport Lesson
Once valued at $8B on the thesis of digitising forwarding. Severe contraction, leadership changes, strategic retreat. The lesson: forwarding is a relationship, capacity, and compliance problem where technology enables but does not disrupt. Incumbents (myKN, myDHLi, CargoWise) now match digital entrants.
Warehousing, Cold Chain & Last Mile
Prologis $210B+ portfolio, 1.2 billion sqft. Vacancy below 4% in prime corridors. AutoStore reduces pick labour 70-80%, increases storage density 300-400%. Cold chain: only 8-12% of MENA/Africa perishables properly temperature-controlled. Post-harvest losses 30-50%. $45-60B cold chain capex needed across MENA and Africa by 2030.
Amazon: 1,600+ delivery stations, 100K+ branded vans, majority of own US parcel volume. MENA: Noon ($2B capital) vertically integrated. Talabat 3,000+ dark stores. Drone delivery (Wing, Zipline) confined to low-density use cases — unlikely >1-2% of last-mile by 2030. MFCs achieve 15-min delivery at 40-60% lower cost only above 800+ daily orders per node. The last mile remains a human-operated, route-density optimisation problem.
We advise logistics operators, shippers, and sovereign entities across supply chain strategy — from network design and cold chain infrastructure to last-mile architecture and logistics-linked real estate investment. Our Dubai presence at the crossroads of East-West trade positions us at the operational centre of the MENA logistics buildout.