Market Trends of France 3PL Industry
Warehousing Trends in France
The increasing demand for last-mile logistics and the developed technologies in the warehousing sector is driving the companies towards outsourcing the warehousing facilities in France. Such an increase in demand by the automobile, agriculture, healthcare and e-retailers is leading the growth of the warehousing space in the market.
Among recent developments, in March 2020, Clarion Gramercy agreed to forward fund €122.5 million for two Grade-A warehouses in prime French logistics location. Additionally, it acquired an 18,857 sq. meter warehouse for €11.5 million. It will further be funding the speculative development of an institutional quality, 68,642 sq. meter warehouse, suitable for a wide range of tenants.
The online stationery shop - SURdiscount renovated its warehouse in Quimper (northern France) installing Mecalux pallet racks increasing the storage capacity by 525 pallets, providing direct access to the products, indispensable for facilitating and speeding up the centre's main operational activity of picking and order preparation.
FM Logistic, in November 2019, has expanded its capacity in Crépy-en-Valois by 16,700 sq. meter increasing its total warehousing space to 116,000 sq. meters with 22 extra loading docks and storage room for 25,400 additional pallets. The site is already being used by the company's other customers in the beauty care sector. The further expansion allows for a more efficient sharing of transport resources between these manufacturers resulting in a reduction of truck movements and carbon emissions. In addition to the warehousing space, the Crépy-en-Valois facility facilitates large co-packing operations along with pick and place robots, added to speed up the co-packing operations.
Transformation of French Automotive Logistics
The French government is launching major investment plans in the automotive sector to develop the electric, autonomous and hybrid vehicle segments that include the facilities like connected, smart and driverless vehicles, new engine types, safe, robotics, etc.
In October 2019, GEFCO Group - the European leader in automotive logistics and global multimodal supply chain expert, announced the launch of two “phygital” solutions (combining physical capabilities and digital technologies) to deliver a supreme user experience. GEFCO also acquired Chronotruck - a digital road freight marketplace and successfully created a digital platform - Moveecar to offer a through logistics service for automotive and mobility players. Moveecar’s digital platform enables car-as-a-service (CaaS) players such as car makers, car dealers, fleet managers, rental and leasing companies, auctioneers, e-commerce pure players and mobility players to provide added-value car logistics throughout the vehicle life cycle.
Containerization for shipping vehicles is one of the solutions to the traditional ro-ro services. Containerization will not only solve the problem of shipping small or irregular volumes of vehicles but will also help in the shipment of new vehicles over long distances, either by truck or rail. Among recent updates on containerization, CFR Rinkens – a Global Leader in Freight Forwarding & Car Shipping, has finalised a contract to ship BMW cars from Europe to Vietnam in containers.
