DHL 2012 Annual Report Download - page 67

 ,  division
BUSINESS UNITS AND MARKET POSITIONS
The air, ocean and road freight forwarder
With its business units Global Forwarding and Freight,  is the Group’s air, ocean
and road freight forwarder. Our services extend from standardised container transport
to highly specialised end-to-end solutions for industrial projects, and solutions tailored
to specic sectors. A team of approximately , employees around the world strives
to continuously improve our services in order to meet our customers’ needs.
Our business model is very asset-light, as it is based on the brokerage of transport
services between our customers and freight carriers. is allows us to consolidate ship-
ments to achieve higher volumes, purchase cargo space at better conditions and optimise
our network utilisation. anks to our global presence, we are able to oer a variety of
routing options and meet our customers’ increasing demand for multimodal shipments.
The leader in a softer air freight market
e air freight market showed signs of weakness in . Although volumes in
the rst half of the reporting year did not decline as much as in the second half of the
previous year. According to , the global airline industry association, worldwide
freight tonne kilometres own in  dropped by .  by the end of June. Airlines
have responded to the lower demand by expanding overall capacity only slightly, by
.  (as at June ). Whilst passenger capacities were increased, freight capacities
were decreased.
In its air freight business,  transports a signicant share of the world’s technol-
ogy and manufacturing products. Transport volumes vary by sector: the Technology
sector saw a decline in the reporting year whilst the Engineering & Manufacturing and
Automotive sectors experienced increases. Since we have an especially large share of air
freight business in the Technology sector, our overall tonnage performance was slightly
below the market average. Cost pressure drove some of our largest customers in particu-
lar to shi parts of their business from air to ocean freight, which is more economical
for them. Aer transporting . million export freight tonnes in , we remained
the air freight market leader in .
Ocean freight market on steady but moderate rise
e ocean freight market showed steady but moderate growth in the reporting year.
However, the traditional peak season in the fourth quarter was nearly absent. Overall
market growth was .  (as at December ),  outperformed this with a growth
rate of .  (as at December ). e increase in ocean freight was mainly fuelled by
intra-Asian and strong European exports, whilst volumes declined on the traditional
Asia-Europe and Asia-North America trade lanes.
e decline in freight rates observed in the prior year came to an end in . Ocean
carriers made a series of general rate increases, which decreased the eective capacity
in the market to the point that overall vessel use was high throughout the entire year.
Aer transporting . million twenty-foot equivalent units in , we remained the
second largest provider of ocean freight services in .
Glossary, page 
. Air freight market, : top 
thousand tonnes
1
1 Data based solely on export freight tonnes.
Source: annual reports, publications and company
estimates.
1,149  Schenker
1,073 Kuehne + Nagel
848 Panalpina
2,447 
. Ocean freight market, : top 
thousand  s 1
1 Twenty-foot equivalent units.
Source: annual reports, publications and company
estimates.
2,724 
1,763  Schenker
1,310 Panalpina
3,274 Kuehne + Nagel
Deutsche Post DHL Annual Report 
Group Management Report
Divisions
 ,  division
63