DHL Group is the logistics company most prolific at making international expansions, followed by A.P. Moller – Maersk and United Parcel Service. GlobalData’s logistics foreign direct investment (FDI) company report highlights the current foreign investments made by leading logistics investors. Buy the report here.

DHL Group has been the most active logistics greenfield investor between Q1 2019 and Q1 2024, according to GlobalData’s FDI Projects Database. The parent company has been actively investing through several of its subsidiaries/company divisions.

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Data Insights Top Logistics Foreign Direct Investment Companies

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Greenfield foreign direct investment is when a company invests abroad to establish a new physical presence or expand an existing operation. Greenfield investments create jobs and/or involve a capital investment into the foreign location. Other forms of FDI, such as mergers and acquisitions, are not included as part of this definition.

The majority of DHL Group investments were in the multi-modal transportation subsector. In fact, 92% of its total foreign investments were in this subsector. It also created projects across a further 12 subsectors.

By business function, most (87.9%) of DHL Group projects were related to logistics & warehousing. Sales, administration & marketing and Headquarters were the next most popular operations undertaken by DHL Group.

The company has been active across ten world regions, mainly focused on North America which received 26.5% of the company’s greenfield investments between Q1 2019 and Q1 2024. Its top three destination countries (by number of greenfield FDI projects) were the US, India and the UK. Combined these three countries account for 40.6% of its total number of logistics investments.

DHL Group created more FDI projects in 2019 compared to any other year between Q1 2019 and Q1 2024.

Other leading FDI project generators in the logistics industry include A.P. Moller – Maersk, United Parcel Service, RETHMANN and La Poste Group.

Germany is the leading source market for outbound logistics greenfield FDI projects. The country accounts for 15.8% of total outbound logistics investment projects. There have been 88 unique parent companies from Germany that have announced logistics FDI projects between between Q1 2019 and Q1 2024.

To further understand the top logistics FDI companies, access GlobalData’s Top logistics Foreign Direct Investment Companies report.

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GlobalData, the leading provider of industry intelligence, provided the underlying data, research, and analysis used to produce this article.

GlobalData’s FDI Projects Database records greenfield FDI throughout the world in real-time. The data can be used to analyse company cross-border expansion activities as well as identify industry, thematic and geographic trends.