At the end of 2019, when we submitted our outlook for 2020, we made the following statement: “In the years to come, e-commerce volumes will create new growth opportunities for the air cargo industry and alter trade patterns forever.” Little did we know the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on the world’s demand for e-commerce.
In 2019, Alibaba’s November 11 Singles Day sales event resulted in a staggering gross merchandise sales value of US $38.3 billion. Alibaba announced that during the 2020 Singles Day event, the volume of goods sold nearly doubled, reaching approximately $75 billion. Alibaba’s service provider, Cainiao Logistics, predicted 700 air cargo charter flights would be needed to deliver the parcels to destinations outside of China.
E-commerce sales now have topped a whopping 15 percent of total retail, according to The Wall Street Journal. The demand for e-commerce facilities, logistics, last-mile, and processing technologies is still in the infant stage of global development.
But there is still more work to do as airports, already transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic, struggle to find the necessary lift and infrastructure to process and move these goods into a last-mile delivery system. Smaller international cargo airports in Columbus, OH; Huntsville, AL; Rockford, IL; and Greenville-Spartanburg, SC, represent locations where new logistics centers can be created specifically for the purpose of receiving and processing these international parcel volumes.
Looking forward to the new administration and potential changes in trade, tariffs, and protectionism, forward-thinking cargo owners, developers, third-party logistics providers and airports will take the opportunity to review the Foreign-Trade Zone program, which provides users with advantages over their competitors in terms of supply chain velocity and duty benefits.