Beat Simon, DP World's Global Chief Commercial Officer for Logistics, explains how the business is evolving into an end-to-end services provider. Having entered the supply chain and logistics business in the 1980s with DANZAS, which subsequently merged with DHL Global Forwarding, Beat Simon can confidently state that he has seen it all. He has since worked all over the world, including France, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and the United States. Before accepting an invitation to take a position as president at APL Logistics, Beat worked to establish Agility, which is today acknowledged as a global leader in supply chain services, infrastructure, and innovation, between 2006 and 2013. He joined the massive DP World in 2022, a company in the same business, and is currently the Global Chief Commercial Officer for Logistics.

For the past few years, DP World has been quite busy. To stay competitive, the company has been gradually expanding into end-to-end supply chain services. Beat provides context for this ongoing transition by saying, "In the past, there was the port, carrier, and freight forwarding industries." Over the past 18 months, there has been a significant amount of consolidation and the entry of asset-heavy providers into end-to-end. "We are in a completely different environment where large shipping lines are purchasing large freight forwarders—not under the same formal name, but acquisitions like CMA CGM purchasing CEVA are occurring."

DP World is an unparalleled logistics force, handling around 9% of world trade through its network. It has approximately 93 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of handling capacity and operates more than 80 maritime and inland ports and terminals. Following the announcement of DP World's new strategy in 2022, which outlined its goal to become an end-to-end supplier offering logistics at scale, the company has recently increased its capacity.

"From DP World's standpoint, we were primarily an asset-heavy provider in ports, terminals, and free zones," Beat claims. "In the future, we want to be right in front of our customers," or beneficial cargo owners (BCOs as they are known in the logistics industry."

The recently acquired supply chain solutions company Syncreon and the Africa-focused provider of integrated market access and logistics solutions Imperial also contributed to this shift. They are a component of what Beat describes as DP World's "toolbox of end-to-end services" that it offers to BCOs.

He goes on, "I get asked all the time, 'How do you deal with your freight forwarder being your competitor but also your customer?'" We live in a competitive and cooperative atmosphere now. It's a significant shift that we now collaborate in certain areas, compete in others, and strive to provide our clients with the finest answer possible.

Of course, DP World's shift to become an end-to-end service provider is heavily reliant on technology. In addition to collaborating with a number of well-known suppliers and allocating resources for M&A in this field, the organization has taken the deliberate choice to do the majority of the required work in-house. Beat continues, "It was a significant conversation." "We wanted to grow our logistics company twofold, and freight forwarding was one of our main priorities.

We stated that, since M&A is unpredictable, 50% of growth comes from organic sources. It's similar to dating: you meet, you get to know each other, and you decide whether there's chemistry. You consider the business, conduct your research, and make a decision, but you never know if you will be able to.

Beat cites the emergence of cloud computing throughout the last ten years as a game-changer for supply chain and logistics companies like DP World and numerous others. The current situation is somewhat different from the past, when each office functioned as a separate business with its own financial, HR, legal, and IT departments.