Global Logistics Focus
Special Report to data center demand were being expanded across the broader supply chain, not just the inbound air legs.
“ We started one-and-a-half years ago with air freight first with the inbound legs to the US, then followed with the last mile, the installation activities, [ and ] leveraging our road business unit as well sea freight,” Paul told analysts during an earnings call.
Kuehne + Nagel is rolling out about 300,000 square meters of new warehouse space that will be dedicated to cloud and tech providers linked to US data center corridors.
“ We expect that looking at the pipeline in the US and other markets for this tech hyperscaler marketplace, the stickiness of our contract logistics organization and the capability now, including vendor management, has been proven. And I have no doubt that we will see more contracts coming our way,” Paul said.
Global forwarders are trying to capture the data center business in different ways, but there is consensus that the industry is only at the beginning of the demand boom.
Brian Bourke, CCO of SEKO Logistics, said demand for high-tech components was surging past that of e-commerce, with“ data centers popping up everywhere” and requiring complex logistics services.“ Every fully populated server rack typically has 10 pallets of air freight that go into it due to the packaging of the components,” Bourke told the Journal of Commerce.
The scale of data center development in the US and Europe means the AI-generated business will be around for some time, said Daniel Wall, president and CEO of Expeditors International.
“ The ongoing heavy demand from AI hyperscalers shows no sign of slowing down, and we have seen increased demand for freighter space as some hyperscalers are requiring upper-deck access for their servers,” Wall said during a second-quarter earnings call.
Expeditors’ second-quarter air freight volume was rose 16 % from the first quarter and 14 % year over year, driven by demand for data center equipment, but also e-commerce.
“ Given the current geopolitical state of the world and rising fuel costs along with tight capacity and routing challenges, air carriers are under enormous strain and may continue to be for some time,” Wall said.
Elevated yields
While forwarders cash in on the value-added services, airlines are reaping the rewards of higher yields. AI-related shipments continue to underpin trans-Pacific growth,
with spot rates from Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia to North America both 33 % above late-February levels, according to rate benchmarking platform Xeneta.
The second-quarter cargo revenues of several Asiabaed carriers hit multi-year highs as demand for components such as AI servers, graphics processing units( GPUs) and memory chips replaced low-value e-commerce parcels as the primary growth engine.
Airlines near the technology manufacturing centers in South Korea and Taiwan are seeing the greatest impact on their bottom lines, with Korean Air reporting a 46 % year-over-year increase in second-quarter cargo revenue of $ 1.07 billion, driven by multi-year technology infrastructure commitments.
China Airlines’ second-quarter cargo revenue was up 43.6 % at $ 747.22 million as the Taiwan-based carrier packed its planes with high-tech trans-Pacific shipments, while compatriot EVA Air saw a 44 % rise in second-quarter cargo revenue to $ 602.87 million. AI server- related goods accounted for about half of its volumes from Taiwan to the US.
Cathay Pacific Cargo reported revenue from freight operations was up 24 % year over year in the first half at $ 1.8 billion, with average yields up 18 %. The airline carried 868,931 tons of cargo in the first half, up 9 % year over year.
Shutterstock. com Lavinia Lau, chief customer and commercial officer at Cathay Pacific, said there was solid growth in the volume of semiconductors and other tech infrastructure to support the AI boom, particularly on the Asia-to-North America trade lane.
“ We see regionally there is a lot of semiconductor trade flows between China, Southeast and Northeast Asia, and semiconductor shipments from Asia to the US have risen strongly,” Lau told reporters during a first-half results briefing.
“ It is driving air cargo flows both on the trans-Pacific and within Asia,” she added.“ That has brought us a lot of opportunities, and we have the network to cover the newfound demand.” Still, there are some headwinds in the market.“ Nearly 300 US bans or moratoriums on new data centers and rising public opposition across South Korea, Japan and the ASEAN [ Association of Southeast Asian Nations ] region are pushing growth toward more geographically diversified markets, with Middle East and Africa capacity expected to expand by 38 % in 2027 alone,” said S & P Global.
email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com
26 Journal of Commerce | October 5, 2026 www. joc. com