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As global supply chains face significant uncertainties in 2025 due to ongoing geopolitical disruptions and evolving trade policies, more companies are looking to one-stop solutions such as third-party logistics (4PL) providers.
The 4PL market has grown 10% over the past two years and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.39% to reach $104.54 billion by the end of 2030, according to a study by Verified market reports.
“There’s more disruption. There’s more fluidity in global network design,” David Gonzalez, vice president of the logistics, customer fulfillment and network design team at Gartnerhe told FreightWaves in an interview.
Technology research and consulting firm Gartner recently released its 2024 “Market Guide for Quarters Logistics”, which speaks to the value that 4PLs offer in an ever-changing global logistics network.
“Companies are choosing to manufacture products in different locations, which results in a different flow of goods from several different countries, and that increases the complexity, but also the flexibility that companies want to retain in how they deploy their global supply chain networks. I think those two are the key reasons why we’ve seen an increase in demand for 4PLs,” Gonzalez said.
While 3PLs can help a company execute its logistics strategy, 4PLs help companies with strategy, orchestration and management of the entire supply chain, according to Gonzalez.
“The biggest difference is that a 4PL doesn’t necessarily have to run the service themselves,” Gonzalez told FreightWaves in an interview. “A 4PL is about managing the day-to-day transactions and day-to-day components of a logistics service, either through infrastructure provided by subcontractors or by managing other organizations and being able to combine all of these individual service notes into one. end-to-end process”.
Gonzalez said companies in the automotive supply chain were some of the first to adopt 4PL services.
“Automotive has been invested in 4PL for a while, and I think it’s probably one of the early movers in supporting this type of service when I think it was first created in the late 1960s, early 1970s, when 4PLs started operating it has become evident in our industry,” Gonzalez said.
Other industries that are increasingly looking to 4PL services are pharmaceuticals, energy and consumer products.
“Interestingly, with retailers, we don’t necessarily see significant growth in the retail sector towards 4PL, but we don’t think their global supply chains are really any less complex than other vertical industries,” Gonzalez said. “I think retailers have been invested in logistics for a long time, so they’ve almost built that capability internally, rather than having to buy it from an outside company.”
