DHL Global Forwarding has opened a new multimodal gateway at the Port of Busan in South Korea to provide additional less-than-containerload (LCL) services from Asia to the Americas.
The new logistics facility will enable DHL to double the 13 LCL services already existing.
The new hub, with an investment cost of EUR500,000, will cut transit times from Japan, South Korea, and China by up to seven days.
Previous shipments were routed through the Hong Kong multimodal gateway.
The Busan hub will consolidated shipments from five North Asian origins—Dalian, Xingang and Qingdao in China; Hakata in Japan; and Busan—for delivery to the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and five South American countries consisting of Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, and Argentina.
“According to some industry reports, we will see trade between Asia and North America grow almost 5 percent in 2013 and more than 5 percent in 2014,” said Kelvin Leung, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding Asia-Pacific.
More services will be added in the following months, he added. “In addition to the 13 new services that will be introduced with the opening of this facility, we plan to launch another 20 new direct LCL services out of South Korea over the next year.”
DHL Global Forwarding operates eight global logistics hubs, of which four are in the Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong, Busan, Singapore, and Colombo), three in Europe (Bremen, Antwerp, and Koper), and one in the U.S. (Los Angeles).
Photo courtesy of DHL
