Under the influence of COVID-19 in 2020, the global political and economic landscape is undergoing profound changes. The central government has put forward a new development pattern of "double circulation" at home and abroad, in which logistics, as the foundation of the social circulation system, will play a more important role.

Correspondingly, the country, society, enterprises and consumers have put forward higher requirements for the comprehensive ability of logistics enterprises. For the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Transport of "further reduce logistics cost, improve efficiency to adapt to the modernization and high quality development" of the implementation opinions, as the people's livelihood security of the logistics industry is more need to grasp the opportunity, accelerate authors efficiency, improve the supply chain flexibility, and promote industrial chain synergy, strengthen and manufacturing linkage, and many other changes.       

Roland Berger once published the trend judgment of "Predicting 2020" on China's logistics industry. Now, we review the past and look forward to the future. The future development of China's logistics industry will further develop around six key words: scale, capital, global, intelligence, business model and supply chain.

 1，Scale        

It is expected that China's transportation logistics industry will be driven by three forces in the future, which will further drive the industry integration and scale development. First, the accelerated scale of specific logistics segments led by top-level national strategies; Second, policy-driven scale; Third, market-driven scale.

The top-level national strategy leads the industry to scale up: to build a safe national logistics hub and channel, and is optimistic about the accelerated growth of multimodal transport and air cargo segmentation

The top-level national strategy leads the industry to scale up: to build a safe national logistics hub and channel, and is optimistic about the accelerated growth of multimodal transport and air cargo segmentation

Drived by the national revolution of rail/water, standardized management of intermodal transport, quality and efficiency improvement of logistics and other aspects, multimodal transport will be an important way of the development of China's long-distance transport in the medium and long term, and become an important transport method and practical guarantee for bulk materials. Taking China-Europe long-distance transport as an example, the stability of the combination of road transport and China-Europe railway transport has been fully verified during the epidemic period and is expected to maintain steady growth in the future. In addition, air cargo is an important channel to ensure the efficient and safe national logistics channels.

The increasing quantity and category of high value cargo and the increasing requirement of time limit are putting forward a great test to air cargo. At present, China's leading continental express delivery, express company has entered the world first-class standard, but air freight compared with the mature European and American markets, the revenue, cargo, fleet size, such as air cargo port infrastructure level have obvious difference, there are still large scale growth space, is expected to further future air freight logistics to specialization, scale development.

Policy drives industry scale: the state promotes the accelerated integration of facilities and resources enterprises to strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises in the market. Meanwhile, policies at the industry level also indirectly promote the integration of relevant markets

       
First of all, at the national level, in the context of deepening supply-side structural reform, the coverage of industrial integration in China is gradually extended to logistics facilities and resource-based industries such as highways, airports and ports, in order to strengthen the efficiency of original resource allocation, release synergies and improve comprehenive service capabilities.       

Take the air and sea sector for example,through the establishment of provincial port, airport group platform to deep promote  overall resource planning at the provincial level,Business synergy development goals.At the same time, Policies at the industry level are also driving market consolidation 

Market-driven industry scale: the acceleration of marketization and integration of logistics enterprises in the process of transformation from incremental market to stock market.

As the overall growth rate of the market slows down, China's logistics industry, which has experienced a period of rapid growth, will transform from incremental capture to stock scramble. In addition, the epidemic has put forward severe assessment on the operation ability of enterprises, and the trend of market-oriented integration is expected to become more obvious. In the process of selecting the weak and keeping the strong, various logistics subsectors show an obvious trend of increasing concentration. For the standardized and large-scale express delivery industry, the industry concentration has significantly increased, and the scale advantage barrier of the head enterprises has emerged, while the non-head players are facing the development crisis of being integrated or cleared out.

At the same time, in the special logistics line market with obvious non-standard attributes and still decentralized industry, new integrated platforms are emerging rapidly and are hot discussed by the capital market. Compared with mature markets such as the United States and Japan, China's logistics market still has room for continuous integration. Under the background of continuous improvement of customer demands and gradual increase of competitive pressure, enterprises should think deeply about the continuous construction of core competitiveness, so as to further seize market share and maintain a leading position.

 2、Capital

Leading logistics companies IPO and through capital means to accelerate the acquisition of quality targets; At the same time, state-owned logistics enterprises accelerated and increased their efforts to promote mixed-use reform.

Leading logistics enterprises to accelerate the IPO sprint, better use of capital tools   

    
In terms of IPO, it is expected that a number of leading logistics companies, including those around integrated supply chain, bulk-bulk logistics and express track, will officially land on the capital market in 2021. Meanwhile, on the merger and acquisition level, a leading domestic logistics group has acquired DHL's supply chain business in China. Roland Berger expects that affected by the epidemic, there will be more capital cooperation opportunities between international logistics giants in China and domestic enterprises in the future, and Chinese logistics enterprises, as strategic investors, will play a greater role in capital.       

Accelerated mixed reform trend of state-owned logistics enterprises: the mixed reform of state-owned enterprises will be further deepened. Guided by the principles of marketization and mutual benefit, more state-owned logistics enterprises will take the initiative to cooperate and integrate with external strategic investors to stimulate innovation vitality    

As a breakthrough in this round of SOE reform, mixed-use reform is stimulating the innovation and development vitality of SOEs in the future. In 2020, a well-known logistics real estate group completed the strategic investment of 50% shares in China Merchants Group's Merchants Capital. Recently, China International Cargo Airlines Co., Ltd. has introduced Shenzhen International, Cainiao Network and other external market strategic investors to form a cooperative and complementary relationship between cargo owners, facilities and transport capacity. In general, we expect that there will be more mixed reform cases between state-owned logistics enterprises and external strategic and financial investors in the future, which is worth focusing on.

3、Global

It is expected that China's transportation logistics industry will have a more distinct and firm vision of global development. First, the national perspective to drive Chinese logistics enterprises to go abroad; Second, the corporate perspective demands that it must go outwards.

It is expected that China's transportation logistics industry will have a more distinct and firm vision of global development. First, the national perspective to drive Chinese logistics enterprises to go abroad; Second, the corporate perspective demands that it must go outwards.

Globalization trend from a national perspective: "One Belt And One Road" brings opportunities for Chinese enterprises to build infrastructure and logistics channels along the routes 

State-owned infrastructure enterprises represented by ports, airports, railways and expressways are accelerating the layout of international business and actively strengthening the ownership and operation rights of overseas logistics infrastructure resources. Similarly, leading logistics companies are strengthening the layout of cross-border logistics and local logistics business, and actively improving the identification and cooperation of high-quality logistics resources and partners in countries along the Belt and Road. In the future, the resource card location of important logistics nodes based on "One Belt And One Road" will become the focus of Chinese investment overseas.     

 Globalization trend from the perspective of enterprises: Transport logistics enterprises take the initiative to promote internationalization and seek overseas growth points under the "new normal"      

With the domestic economy entering the "new normal", internationalization has become one of the important strategic directions for leading logistics enterprises to maintain continuous business growth. Through overseas warehouse logistics assets invested in the acquisition and construction of overseas landing teams, overseas logistics service extension and other ways, the enterprise gradually improve the global supply chain and logistics infrastructure network, and practice the development goal of global integration of supply chain and logistics.       

 
At the same time, with the pace of Chinese manufacturing going to the world, a number of logistics enterprises with global supply chain service ability are rising rapidly. Taking the 3C industry as an example, related enterprises are actively setting up supply chains and logistics service networks in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other emerging developing countries to help upstream enterprises to go overseas and lay the guarantee ability of global middle and back stage services.      

 4、Wisdom

 Smart technology in China's logistics industry will drive the industry to improve quality and efficiency and cultivate new players.The capital market and enterprises have high expectations for the implementation of logistics smart technology application scenarios       

The capital market and enterprises have high expectations for the implementation of logistics smart technology application scenarios   

Automation, artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of things and other technology-driven logistics technology application scenarios are becoming a hot spot in the industry. In addition to the capital market, more and more logistics giants are stepping up the layout of logistics smart technology in the form of logistics science and technology industry funds, group R&D investment, etc. Behind it is the high expectation of cost reduction and efficiency increase for the industry driven by smart technology. At the same time, Roland Berger is also optimistic about the future logistics technology equipment providers and service providers with potential under the new track of smart logistics.     

5、Business model

It is expected that the logistics industry will further improve the efficiency of the industry based on model innovation.

The demand differentiation of logistics market is driving the innovation of logistics business model      

With the deepening of the new retail transformation, logistics demand scenarios are constantly iterating and subdividing, which promotes the continuous innovation of China's logistics model. In the past few years, with the popularity of instant delivery services mainly in the scene of takeaway meals, users' increasingly high minute-level timeliness demands have promoted the continuous iterative emergence of logistics business models different from the traditional central network system, such as "front-end warehouse" and "store-warehouse integration".        

With the deepening of the new retail transformation, logistics demand scenarios are constantly iterating and subdividing, which promotes the continuous innovation of China's logistics model. In the past few years, with the popularity of instant delivery services mainly in the scene of takeaway meals, users' increasingly high minute-level timeliness demands have promoted the continuous iterative emergence of logistics business models different from the traditional central network system, such as "front-end warehouse" and "store-warehouse integration".

At present, the community group buying with fresh as the core category is in a period of rapid development in which heroes and capital are competing to enter a vigorous development. Accordingly, the logistics mode of central warehouse - grid warehouse - group point around the city and community distribution is also in the stage of constant trial and error and optimization, which is worth looking forward to.

Enabling the traditional mode of science and technology and the activation and integration of traditional resources        

In fact, a group of "technical players" are using technology to solve the traditional logistics industry pain points, and bring a new customer service experience. For example, in the typical fields of road transportation and ocean freight forwarding, new players such as carless transportation platforms and digital freight forwarding agents are emerging, and they are favored by the capital market.

At the same time, traditional resources are deepening integration and collision with the logistics industry, which is expected to form a new logistics network and infrastructure with potential value. Taking expressway resources as an example, with the gradual cancellation of domestic expressway toll stations, a number of logistics network nodes with high value location resources will be released. Therefore, the concept of expressway backbone network is gradually emerging.

6、Enhance the integration of logistics and supply chain

Supply chain flexibility trend under demand change: product design and supply chain will be more flexible in the future, and the linkage between supply chains will be more and more close, putting forward higher requirements for logistics enterprises

With the support of big data and industrial Internet, a reverse production model driven by users has been developed in modern manufacturing, namely C2M model (Custo-mer-to Manufacturer). In the C2M mode, consumers place orders directly through the platform, and the factory receives customers' personalized orders, and designs, purchases, produces and delivers goods according to the needs.

The rapid increase in the number of SKUs in FMCG, clothing and other industries and the acceleration of the new pace of the supply chain put forward the high difficulty of "small order fast reverse" requirements. In order to cope with the requirements of "multi-variety, small batch, multi-batch and short cycle", correspondingly, higher requirements are put forward for Chinese logistics enterprises to transform from logistics service to supply chain service.

The B2B platform of vertical subdivision supply chain will further promote the efficiency of supply chain in all industries

To grasp the vertical industry opportunities that are still relatively dispersed in the production and sales end, namely, the development opportunities of more vertically segmented B2B platforms, so as to promote the efficiency of supply chain in various industries. In the stage of industrial Internet, due to the specific attributes of different vertical industries in terms of circulation system, upstream and downstream decentralization, logistics and transportation requirements, etc., with reference to the development experience of 2B service market in developed countries, each track is expected to incubate a number of giants.

In the industrial Internet system, capital flow and information flow (such as SaaS) serve as financial and technical guarantee, and the supply chain platform centering on business flow and logistics can improve the industrial efficiency through the transformation of supply chain. Especially to auto parts, raw food textile raw materials, industrial products, steel bulk and other relative standards, trading dynamics, there is a considerable interest rate or high frequency and high viscosity of the segmentation industry is expected to break through first.

Enterprise internal logistics and supply chain capacity externalization, business become a new profit point

The business model of building external service capability based on the solidification and business of internal capability is gradually becoming a new profit point for Chinese enterprises. Separate supply chain service companies, spun off from such industry leaders, have emerged in both the manufacturing and food and beverage retail sectors.        

Some mature manufacturing enterprises to VMI warehouse management, suppliers, raw material customs clearance, logistics services supply chain services to strip out the factory, the formation of independent business with foreign to the market to provide service, supply chain and customer or supplier resources, relying on the parent company, upstream and downstream enterprises rapidly expand the external business, become a leading supply chain integrated service provider in the field of intelligent manufacturing. Referred to the leading benchmark, it is a good idea for traditional enterprises to provide market-oriented service to the superior supply chain service capacity in the system in order to seek for a breakthrough in the new normal development of economy.