Freight Forwarding Market Size & Share Analysis - Growth Trends and Forecast (2027 - 2032)

Market Overview

Freight Forwarding Market Snapshot & Metrics Overview

Study Period	2020 - 2032
Market Size (2027)	USD 633.9 Billion
Market Size (2032)	USD 803.2 Billion
Growth Rate (2027 - 2032)	4.85 %
Fastest Growing Market	Asia-Pacific
Largest Market	Asia-Pacific
Market Concentration	Medium
Major Players* DSV A/S DHL Group Kuehne+Nagel C.H. Robinson Expeditors International of Washington, Inc.	*Disclaimer: Major Players sorted in no particular order

• South East Asia

Market Trends and Insights

Cross-Border E-Commerce Parcel Boom

Cross-border parcel growth creates a forwarding opportunity in combining numerous small consignments into manageable international movements. EU low-value imported consignments, which include most e-commerce consignments and some other imports, rose 26% in 2025 to close to 5.9 billion items. That expanding shipment population increases the potential workload for consolidation, documentation and handoffs even when individual merchandise values are low. For merchants, a forwarding service that coordinates those steps can make fragmented international orders easier to serve.

End-to-End Shipment-Visibility Adoption

Shipment visibility gives forwarders a service layer beyond arranging physical transport, provided shipment signals become usable customer information. In November 2025, Kuehne+Nagel reported that its Road Customer Visibility platform used a global network of more than 100 million network-enabled devices built with Chorusview.^[1] The platform transmitted smart-label and sensor data to the cloud for artificial intelligence to produce shipment insights. This combination can connect physical shipment information with a forwarder's customer service, making the information useful beyond an isolated location update. Because the reader network lets the road-forwarding service include AI-processed shipment insights, a shipper choosing a road forwarder can compare offers on the information delivered with the movement and not only on the haul price.

Near-Shoring and "China-Plus-One" Trade Shifts

Nearshoring can create location-specific forwarding opportunities as new production nodes change route requirements, even when benefits are uneven across manufacturers. Intretech opened a facility in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico, in October 2025, reporting nearly 2,000 jobs created and closer proximity to customers in the Americas. Among surveyed Mexican manufacturers with more than 100 workers integrated into global value chains, 9.1% reported nearshoring-related increases in production, sales or investment in July 2024-June 2025, down from 20.3% in July 2023-June 2024. This contrast favors services built around confirmed manufacturing nodes and their supplier or customer connections. A plant serving regional customers can require international input links while changing the outbound distribution task. Selective corridor coverage is therefore a better commercial fit than treating all manufacturers as beneficiaries of the same supply-chain shift.

Cold-Chain Investment for Pharma and Food

Temperature-sensitive cargo creates an opportunity to combine international forwarding with storage suited to the product's handling needs. DHL Global Forwarding committed USD 1.5 million in December 2025 to expand cold-storage capacity near Los Angeles International Airport for temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical, life-sciences and healthcare freight. DP World launched a cold-chain warehouse in Taloja, Navi Mumbai, in May 2025, with 11,000 pallet positions and multiple temperature zones for pharmaceutical, dairy, frozen-food and perishable-agriculture cargo.^[2] The airport commitment targets a forwarding interface, while the Indian warehouse adds operating storage capacity for several sensitive cargo categories.

Port Congestion and Container Imbalances

Port congestion constrains forwarding when available vessel capacity cannot be deployed reliably enough to meet a shipper's movement requirements. UNCTAD reported that increased container cargo flows in 2025 strained port operations, increasing turnaround times and delays and reducing effective vessel supply and reliability. The cargo-flow increase included China-to-United States movements. For forwarders arranging those movements, delays at the port interface can undermine a service commitment even when a sailing has been booked. This creates a timing constraint across the shipment rather than simply a shortage of nominal vessel space.

Global Driver and Warehouse-Labor Shortage

A shortage of drivers can prevent a forwarder from converting customer demand into an executable road movement. IRU's 2025 survey found about 2.9 million truck-driver positions unfilled across 18 markets, equal to 11% of the covered truck-driver workforce. Around two-thirds of European road transport operators in the survey reported turning down new contracts because they could not find enough drivers. That refusal links the labor problem to transport capacity that a forwarding provider may need to procure for its customers. Additional bookings cannot solve the constraint when the operator lacks the people required to perform the movement.

*Our forecasts treat driver/restraint impacts as directional, not additive. The impact forecasts reflect baseline growth, mix effects, and variable interactions.

Freight Forwarding Market Segment Analysis

Ocean freight forwarding accounted for a 61.78% share of the freight forwarding market size in 2026. DHL estimated global ocean-freight export volume in the portion controlled by forwarders at 69 million TEUs in 2025. The largest segment's container scale can support consolidation and routing services, with forwarders coordinating a broad pool of containerized export requirements.

Multimodal and intermodal forwarding is the fastest-growing segment, with a forecast CAGR of 6.05% over 2027-2032. In September 2025, CMA CGM Group announced its acquisition of UK intermodal rail freight operator Freightliner Ltd to strengthen its integrated, low-carbon intermodal offering. Freightliner retained operational autonomy as a multi-customer operator under the announced arrangement. Such arrangements can connect rail capabilities with a wider logistics offer while preserving access for customers beyond the acquiring group. The forwarding opportunity is to coordinate the interfaces between modes as a single service, while the underlying transport operators retain distinct operating roles.

Large enterprises represented a 68.1% freight forwarding market share in 2026. Amazon India announced 12 new fulfillment centers and the expansion of 6 others in August 2025, representing 8.6 million cubic feet of additional storage capacity. Logistics-industry partners were to operate and manage the new sites. Such multi-site programs can create a potential need to align international goods movements with several fulfillment locations, giving forwarders a program-wide coordination task. A shipment serving this kind of customer must fit the larger distribution footprint, making the integration of individual movements part of the service proposition.

Small and medium enterprises are the fastest-growing segment, with a forecast CAGR of 6.2% over 2027-2032. The share of UK SME employers directly importing goods or services rose to 24% in 2025 from 23% in 2024. Among goods-importing firms in that population, a shipment-specific forwarding offer can connect cross-border transport and clearance responsibilities without requiring a program covering multiple distribution locations.

Traditional asset-light forwarders were the largest segment, with an 80.37% share of the market in 2026. Kuehne+Nagel, which describes its model as asset-light, reported 4.33 million TEUs of Sea Logistics volume in 2025 and a global leading position in that business. Its Sea Logistics business combined full-container-load movements with specialized reefer, pharmaceutical, e-commerce and project services. That service mix shows how an asset-light business can extend from standardized container arrangements into cargo-specific tasks within the broader forwarding model.

Digital-first / online platforms are the fastest-growing segment, with a forecast CAGR of 17.4% over 2027-2032. Freightos' vendor-neutral platform reported a preliminary count of 494,000 net bookings for freight and related services in Q3 2026, up 15% year over year.^[3] The count included bookings with third-party sellers and Clearit, net of cancellations before period-end, as well as fee-generating white-label portal bookings. Freightos also reported approximately 21,900 individual buyer users placing bookings in Q3 2026. A shared booking network can therefore aggregate use across many participants, making user access and transaction execution a potential growth route alongside a forwarder's own service capacity.

Retail and e-commerce formed the largest segment, with a 29.69% share of the total market in 2026. U.S. retail e-commerce sales for businesses with paid employees were estimated at USD 340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, seasonally adjusted but not adjusted for price changes. In the EU, 78% of internet users aged 16 to 74 who had used the internet in the previous 12 months bought or ordered goods or services online for private use in 2025. For retailers importing physical merchandise, these patterns support an upstream forwarding offer that connects international transport with the fulfillment network serving the final customer.

Healthcare and pharmaceuticals form the fastest-growing segment, with a forecast CAGR of 8.15% over 2027-2032. In October 2025, U-Freight Group announced a contract award to move pharmaceutical reefer containers from European locations to designated ports across China for a Chinese medical organization. That Europe-to-China award makes geographic execution and pharmaceutical specialization complementary selling points for providers coordinating the container's origin and destination requirements. In automotive-related logistics, DHL extended its logistics partnership with the FIA World Endurance Championship and 24 Hours of Le Mans in June 2026, adding the Asian Le Mans Series while continuing race-car and equipment transport.

Geography Analysis

Asia-Pacific Freight Forwarding Market

Asia-Pacific accounted for a 37.4% share of the freight forwarding market size in 2026 and is forecast to grow fastest at a CAGR of 7.4% over 2027-2032. Vietnam's airports handled approximately 1.8 million metric tons of cargo in 2025, a record, with international cargo comprising 74.7% of throughput. Airlines registered in Asia-Pacific also recorded 4.3% year-over-year growth in air-cargo demand, measured in metric ton-kilometers, in August 2026. Vietnam's record throughput and international cargo mix give forwarders a regional growth opening in connecting local airport execution with cross-border capacity.

In North America, Canada's export value to destinations outside the United States rose 16% in 2025, increasing freight demand through Canadian ports and airports. Demand for Canadian commodities and resources supported overseas growth, shifting reliance toward maritime, rail and air gateways. South America offers a different road-based opportunity, with Brazilian road-export value to the region totaling USD 22.6 billion in 2025. Industrialized and higher-value goods supported that regional road trade, making cross-border road execution relevant to the cargo mix. The commercial specialties diverge accordingly, with overseas gateway integration in Canada and regional industrial-goods routing from Brazil serving different movement requirements.

In Europe, international transport accounted for 24.4% of the EU's 2025 road-freight activity, measured in metric ton-kilometers and carried by EU-registered vehicles. That cross-border component offers forwarders a service base for coordinating road movements between national networks, with the opportunity centered on execution across borders. In the Middle East and Africa, DP World launched a shipping service from Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates to Berbera in Somaliland in October 2025. The announced service included scheduled calls at Aden and Djibouti, with cargo able to connect onward from Berbera toward Ethiopia. That inland option gives forwarders a basis for developing Ethiopia-bound itineraries through an additional maritime gateway, expanding the routing choices available to those shippers.

Regulatory Framework and Outlook

This comparison examines selected jurisdictions from the perspective of an international forwarder establishing local services connected to ports and undertaking customs-related work where authorized. U.S.-located ocean forwarders face Federal Maritime Commission licensing and financial-responsibility conditions before offering services, while covered Saudi establishments require Transport General Authority forwarding licenses. Customs declaration or port registration then adds role-specific requirements, so the commercial comparison turns on which activity the forwarder intends to perform.

The United States receives a Medium rating because pre-service ocean-forwarder licensing and financial responsibility are defined entry tasks, with continuity expected in the existing authorization framework. Germany's completed ICS2 rollout and Singapore's requirements for declaration registration and declarant testing support Medium ratings, with ongoing filing and qualification work anchoring continuity in both systems. Brazil's Medium rating reflects Federal Revenue-administered Siscomex authorization for freight agents, with the established authority structure favoring continuity of the system-access route. Saudi Arabia receives a Low rating because port registration requires customs-clearance and forwarding or unified-logistics licenses, warehouse evidence and a port-handler agreement, maintaining a more involved entry process.

Value Chain Stages

The value chain compares firms coordinating freight with operators moving, handling and releasing it through a representative international import movement. DSV's service flow covers booking, pickup, warehousing and customs work through destination distribution, with transport subcontracted to carriers. Forwarding service revenue, carrier freight revenue and cargo-handling income create distinct earnings pools across this coordinated movement.

An asset-light forwarder can build a broad service offer while relying on other operators to supply the underlying transport. DHL Group reported subdued European road-freight demand in 2025 alongside capacity tightening that increased procurement prices. Forwarders therefore face a procurement problem that softer demand alone does not solve, because less available haulage can raise the price of securing a road leg. Maintaining alternatives across haulers can protect the ability to complete an import movement when the road stage tightens, even if the wider demand environment is subdued.

Key Opportunities for Market Participants

The opportunities compare an open institutional procurement route with services built around active customs requirements for international goods movements. A 2026 UN Secretariat expression of interest (EOI) offers eligible multimodal sea/surface forwarders a route to a roster for future tender invitations. Economic operators bringing goods into or transiting through the EU must submit safety and security data in an entry summary declaration (ENS) through its import control system (ICS2). When a carrier lacks data for a complete filing, multiple filings require contractual coordination and advance exchange of linkage details with house-level filers.

The central opening is a forwarding offer that assigns transport and entry responsibility clearly for a covered shipment. Covered U.S. non-postal merchandise at USD 800 or less per person per day must use formal or informal entry, subject to statutory exceptions, and the exemption's statutory termination is scheduled for July 1, 2027. Scheduled termination strengthens the case for integrating qualified entry execution into the forwarding offer, making customs capability relevant to service design beyond the suspension itself.