Under internal and external troubles, how can freight forwarding enterprises break through the situation?

1. External shocks surge the pressure
As the intermediary between the cargo owner and the carrier, the freight forwarder plays an important role in international trade
Although the late start of international freight forwarding industry in China, it has developed rapidly and has become an emerging service industry that is beginning to take shape.
These enterprises are distributed all over the country, distributed in more than 30 departments and fields, and coexisted with multiple economic sectors such as state-owned, collective, foreign investment, and shareholding system.
Currently, most import and export commercial cargo transportation and transit business, as well as most international air cargo transportation business in China are completed through freight forwarding enterprises.
However, in the past two years, due to the influence of the epidemic and the international environment, the life of freight forwarders has not been easy.
Especially this year, due to the influence of political conflicts and epidemic, most of the world's economies have experienced inflation and a recession trend, leading to a decrease in the demand for imported goods in major economies such as Europe and America.
On November 4th, Shanghai Shipping Exchange released the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index at 1579.21 points, falling 7.0% compared with the last period.
The market freight rate (sea transportation and sea transportation surcharge) for exports from Shanghai Port to the base ports in Europe was USD 1,763/TEU, falling 16.1% compared with the last period.
The market freight rates (sea transportation and sea transportation surcharge) for exports from Shanghai Port to the base ports in Western US and Eastern US were USD 1,681/FEU and USD 4,890/FEU respectively, falling 11.6% and 8.0% compared with the last period respectively.
2. Internal bottlenecks hinder the development
The international freight forwarding industry in China is facing not only the shock of external environment, but also problems such as narrow business scope, low digitalization degree, and short of professional talents, which have become constraints on the development of the international freight forwarding industry in China.
In terms of business, freight forwarders mainly provide customers with all logistics and document services in trade process, with relatively low entry threshold.
Therefore, most of freight forwarding enterprises in China are small and medium-sized enterprises, with small scale and relatively small business scope.
Most small enterprises still rely on traditional intermediary services, with their revenue mainly derived from soliciting freight source and earning commissions, and their requirements for hardware are not high.
This also leads to a low digitization degree in the freight forwarding industry, relatively backward information technology equipment, imperfect service networks and information service systems, and a lack of complete international business network system.
Due to the backward technical service means, the service items that can be provided are relatively single, and it is impossible to position the market and formulate corresponding development strategies in accordance with customer demands.
As can be seen, China's containerized freight index continues to decline, which is "falling endlessly". The pressure faced by freight forwarding enterprises can be imagined.
Freight demand is showing signs of weakness, but transport capacity is increasing, which has directly led to a decline in freight rates for freight forwarding enterprises.
With the strong support of China, the international freight forwarding industry has become an important force in China's foreign trade transportation, making indelible contributions to the development of China's foreign trade and international transportation, and even the development of the entire national economy.
According to the In-depth Analysis and Development Prospect Forecast Report of China International Freight Forwarding Industry from 2022 to 2027 published by China Research Institute of Industry, at present, more than 30,000 international freight forwarding agencies have registered with the competent authorities in China, with more than 2 million employees and an annual increase of 5%~10%.