Deutsche post DHL has announced the roll out of its suite of multi-modal services by its Global Forwarding and Freight division, combining air, road, rail and sea transportation to move cargo from China worldwide.

"We believe multi-modal solutions will shape the future of logistics as companies look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, reduce transport costs, and especially in Asia, deal with seasonal capacity shortages," said DHL Global Forwarding and Freight CEO Hermann Ude.

DHL Global Forwarding anticipates that the popularity of multi-modal services will continue to increase in view of seasonal capacity shortages that are expected to remain in the coming two to three years.

Kelvin Leung, CEO, North Asia Pacific, DHL Global Forwarding, said: "With multi-modal solutions, customers can opt to replace air freight with combinations of rail, road, sea and air transport with different transit times, costs and levels of CO2 emissions.

"Compared to using air freight alone, using multi-modal services will result in cost savings of 20 to 50 per cent and as much as 90 per cent when replacing air freight with just international rail. In addition, switching from air freight to a multi-modal combination of sea, air, road and rail transportation can achieve a reduction in carbon emissions of as much as 89 per cent."

 Source: shipping online