Year-on-year change - parcels and express volume worldwide 2012-2019

Growth rates for global parcel and express volumes have been increasing sharply in recent years, reaching a 5.6 percent growth in 2019. This is an increase from only 4.3 percent in 2014.

Reasons for growth

The Asia Pacific region is the main source of the global increase of express and small package volumes. While the more developed markets of Europe and North America have experienced modest, single-digit growth over the last few year, the Asia Pacific market has experienced double digit growth for every year since at least 2012.

E-commerce in the Asia Pacific region

In turn, there are two interrelated factors behind much of the express and small package market growth in the Asia Pacific region. First is the increasing size of the middle class, most notably in China but also, to a lesser extent, in India. The second factor is the increasing prevalence of e-commerce in the region, fueled in part by the aforementioned growth of the middle class. Home to industry giants Alibaba and Tencent, e-commerce in China is expected to become a trillion U.S. dollar market by 2022. And while the Indian e-commerce market is nowhere near as large, it is also valued in the tens of billions of U.S. dollars and growing rapidly.