Forwarders and Carriers investing in growing Vietnam
Seems everyone I talk to these days is talking about Vietnam. Certainly there are many positives to Vietnam’s growing economy, and as companies continue to increase their sourcing from even-lower-than-China-cost Vietnam forwarders and carriers are making investments to handle the cargo of the present and the future. Via Air Cargo World:
In October, Schenker set up a fully owned Vietnamese air and ocean forwarding subsidiary, and broke ground the following month on a 15,000-square-foot logistics hub in the Song Than Industrial Zone near Ho Chi Minh City, which is scheduled for completion in April.
The express carriers are also stepping up their presence.
As part of a $14 million investment program in the country, DHL is building two new service centers – one of them in Hanoi – and two courier depots in Da Nang and Haiphong. In anticipation of strong and continuing double-digit growth, rival TNT Express allocated more than $10.4 million this spring toward establishing a domestic express network covering 23 stations.
However, as the article is quick to mention, there are question marks about Vietnam’s infrastructure being able to handle the increasing growth. Having been to Vietnam myself, I can honestly say that Vietnam’s infrastructure is woefully inadequate and needs extensive development, quickly. There are some that are wildly optimistic about Vietnam, somehow thinking that it’s the “next China” but Vietnam has a long ways to go before being on the same scale as China. That’s not to say they won’t get there – it wasn’t all that long ago that China wasn’t much better, infrastructure-wise, than Vietnam.
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