At the DHL Express Capital Markets Briefing held in London at the end of last week, company CEO, John Pearson, began by highlighting a phrase he said he’d heard recently that “global trade is stronger than ever. It’s just the destination address that has changed.”
He went on: “Just like water finds a way to different places, so it is with trade which grew faster in the first half of this year than any other first half since 2011.”
50 kg- 3,000 kg range
Leveraging its existing TDI (Time Definite International) network, DHL Express is pitching the HWX product at “the right industries and right lanes” and targeting high value, well-packed industrial shipments.
“We're relaunching HWX at a time where supply chain resilience and reliability and speed and economic value are more important than ever. We’re saying to our customers, have you switched your trade lane focus to somewhere else because of what’s happening in the world?” – an allusion to US import tariffs or the Middle East conflict.
“Has that brought you any supply chain difficulties? Have supply chain disruptions – of which there have been many every single month for the last five years really – meant that you're slower to market, impacting your service quality to customers.”
DHL Express’ response is that in this rather difficult trading world, it can offer “a nicely-controlled asset base with the ability to move heavyweight shipments as fast and reliably as lightweight ones.”
Double HWX Business Over Next Five Years
Also addressing the Briefing was DHL Express ‘EVP Global Network Operations & Aviation, Travis Cobb, who pointed to the strong growth curve the company’s HWX product is currently on.
“When you look at +50 kilo shipments in our network for 2025 it was around 2% of our global shipments but it represented a significantly higher percentage of our total kilos that we carried in the network. And if you think about the (global) TDI Weight per Day (WpD) growth we were seeing in the second quarter this year of 9.4%, HWX is growing faster than that. So, I definitely feel we've got the capacity, both in the air and on the ground, to double this (HWX) business and I think we'll do that over the next five years.”
Pearson gave further evidence of the strong growth, alluding to a recent trip to South Korea where he discovered that the local DHL Express unit had achieved WpD growth of 20% in the last three months and 30% growth in heavyweight express.
Heavyweight express now accounts for more than 50% of DHL Express’ total country mix in South Korea.
‘Growth Diamonds’
DHL Express is generating HWX volume from what Pearson referred to as “growth diamonds” - buoyant industrial verticals such as Aerospace & Industrial (turbines, compressors); automotive (EV batteries, robot arms); Technology/Data Centers (server racks, battery modules); Life Science & Healthcare, (surgical robots, diagnostic equipment) and New Energy Technologies (hydraulic cylinders, wind turbine motors).
“We’re selling heavyweight solutions and controlling and managing revenue per kilo and channeling the incremental volume, good quality volume, good yield volume, into our air network which is far fitter and far leaner than ever before. The air network is the jewel in our crown. It's the most important thing we have. It's been there since 1969. Now’s the time to really monetize the utilization of that network.”
The strategy is to fill spare network capacity with high-quality HWX volume (palletized, stackable industrial parts). It includes utilizing space on return, under-used, systemically unbalanced air sectors, the so-called ‘blue lanes,’ among them US to the world and MENA back to Asia. Some of these blue lanes have been growing at a rate of 12%-14% in recent months.
Collaboration In Forwarding Space, Not Encroachment
During the Q&A session that followed the Briefing, Pearson and Cobb were quizzed on what pure-play forwarders might make of DHL Express’ push into the heavyweight business, and also, whether tensions exist with the Group’s forwarding arm, DHL Global Forwarding (DGF)?
Pearson first pointed to the approach of Group CEO, Tobias Meyer (appointed in May 2023) who had brought “a level of intensity and collaboration to the organization and getting the best result. And then we started the HWX initiative and there was a change of leadership also at the sales commercial level at DGF. Today, collaboration with DGF is daily and very positive and in both ways, I would add.”
Pearson went on to explain how in earlier days DHL Express had adopted “a friend, and foe campaign” with forwarders.
“As a friend, they would give us their small shipments and as a foe, where we would sell against them. There were many forwarders that gave us their less than 50 or 100 kgs. I’ve had this mindset, this sort of two hearts in my chest for forwarders.”
He continued: “There’s a forwarder in our group with whom we collaborate very well. As for the rest of the story. Just imagine a 200 kg box and that you're a bit of an ad hoc shipper. You call up Kuehne + Nagel. They turn up in a semi-trailer, the hiss of air brakes and they jump out the cab. But then they say, is that it?
“Well, a lot of these shipments should be on our dedicated heavyweight routes that are coming to pick up something that is eight times that size. So, I'm just very comfortable with how we're selling against forwarders, how we collaborate with our own forwarder and where we partner with forwarders in moving their smalls.”
Cobb added: “Think about the market share that DGF has in air freight. The two of us are working together to go and grab market share from our competition, DGF on the air freight side. We (at DHL Express) are targeting heavyweight express, not in taking volume from our sister division, DGF, but going out into the air freight industry and taking it from there.”
