DHL bolsters trade between China and Germany
DHL has launched its new direct Less than Container Load (LCL) services, connecting Dalian and Shanghai, China to Hamburg, Germany. Dalian and Shanghai are two major ports along the Chinese coast and both are ranked the world’s ten largest ports.
In the past year, Shanghai Port handled 29.07m TEU while Dalian port handled 5.24m TEU, an increase of 16.3% and 15% respectively.
The two newly launched direct LCL services will provide Chinese exporters a faster and more competitive ocean freight option for shipments through the two Chinese ports to Hamburg, largest port of Germany, the company said.
Kelvin Leung, CEO, North Asia Pacific, DHL Global Forwarding, said: “In the highly competitive business landscape, companies are increasingly faced with the challenge of responding more quickly to customer demands. The introduction of these new services provides customers with enhanced LCL offering in the fast-growing North Asia Pacific – Europe market and support the healthy trade between China and Germany.”
Germany is China’s largest trade partner in the European Union and vice versa. Bilateral trade volume between the two countries totaled $128.56bn in 2009. China has become first largest import partner of Germany and the eighth largest export partner. DHL said the launch of the new services will further boost the trading activities between Chinese and German businesses, especially small and medium enterprises and industry sectors including automotive, consumer products, electronics and textile will benefit from this new service.
“Bringing these new direct LCL services from China enables us to provide more options for businesses in China to deliver their products to Germany and in the meantime, strengthen our overall capacity of LCL services. It will also help further enhance the competitiveness of Shanghai and Dalian ports in the international shipping market,” said Steve Huang, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding China.
Operated by Danmar Lines, DHL’s in-house carrier, these new direct LCL services will enable shipments to arrive early and ultimately lead to reduction of CO2 emissions.
The new direct twice-a-week service from Shanghai to Hamburg will offer increased options to satisfy client demand, while exporters using DHL’s new direct LCL services from Dalian to Hamburg will see their shipments’ transit time reduced by six days. Shipments arriving in Hamburg can then be further delivered to an additional seven destinations in Germany including Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart through DHL’s inland network.
