The world’s top-100 air cargo forwarders together cover 58 percent of the worldwide air cargo market. That group consists of 37 forwarders from Asia Pacific, 27 from Europe, 17 from the United States, 11 from the Middle East and South Asia (MESA) and four each from Africa and Latin America.

The top 20 are made up of 12 European, four Japanese, three U.S. and one MESA forwarder, with a combined market share of 43 percent. The top 10 show a joint market share of 35 percent, with individual shares ranging from 8.5 percent to 1.5 percent, realized, in descending order, by DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, Schenker, Expeditors, Panalpina, UPS, Nippon Express, DSV/UTi, Kintetsu, and CEVA.

These facts are elucidated in a recent report from WorldACD, a company which provides a large air cargo market database.

The 20 largest markets in the differ greatly from one market to another, WorldACD found. Strongly concentrated markets are found in Germany, Japan, the U.S. midwest, France, and Singapore, with shares of the worldwide top 20 ranging between 60 percent and 67 percent.

On the other side of the spectrum figure the highly dispersed markets of India, southeast China, and the United Arab Emirates, where the world’s top 20 have a combined share of less than 30 percent. These three markets are dominated by local or regional forwarders from outside the world’s top 100, which together have shares of 60, 64 and 58 percent, respectively. The top forwarder in India has a market share of barely five percent.

In Germany, the six biggest forwarders are all European. In Japan, nine of the ten largest are Japanese. In India, five forwarders in the local top 10 have their origins in MESA, while in the U.S. Pacific four of the five biggest are home grown as well. In most of the other main markets, WorldACD found a strong presence of the larger forwarders from Europe and the U.S. who fanned out across the world. From the 37 Asia Pacific forwarders, only the large ones from Japan have successfully internationalized so far.

The world’s top-forwarders have strongly diverging shares from one market to another. DHL, with a worldwide share of 8.5 percent, has 3.1 percent in southeast China, and 19.4 percent in Australia. Expeditors, the largest U.S. forwarder with a worldwide share of 3.3 percent, has 0.6 percent in Australia, and 8.5 percent in the U.S. Midwest. Nippon Express, the largest forwarder from Asia, with a worldwide share of 2.4 percent, has no presence in the UAE, but a 21-percent market share in Japan.