Connection · Intelligent Chain · Future: Wenaili's New Growth Strategy for Freight Forwarders, as Seen from the Top 10 Events in 2025 Air Logistics
导读
The year 2025 witnessed a profound qualitative transformation in China's air logistics industry. From the launch of the world's first smart cargo terminal to the inaugural flight of a ton-level drone completing cross-city logistics on the plateau; from the arrival of the first dedicated air cargo hub in the Yangtze River Delta to the strategic integration of state-owned giants in the air logistics sector... a series of landmark events are redrawing the industry map. These changes signify not only infrastructure upgrades but also a fundamental shift in market rules, customer demands, and competitive logic. For the vast number of freight forwarding and logistics enterprises, understanding the essence of "connection" behind these events and building a matching "intelligent chain" capability is key to grasping the future. This article will focus on this core, delve into the connotations of these events, and provide freight forwarders with a set of actionable growth strategies derived from Wenaili's digital marketing practices.
Looking back at 2025, we can clearly perceive that China's air logistics is moving away from extensive growth reliant solely on "aircraft + cargo hold" and stepping into an era of "intelligent chain" centered on efficient connection and intelligent collaboration. The industry's milestone events reveal three core trends, each corresponding to an urgent need for freight forwarders to upgrade their marketing strategies and customer value propositions.
1. The "Deep Connection" of Physical Networks Calls for the "Front-end Extension" and "Integrated" Restructuring of Freight Forwarding Services.
In the past, airports were isolated nodes. The transformation in 2025 aims to break this fragmentation: The "Shanghai Airport - Suzhou Front-end Cargo Station" embeds international air services directly into the manufacturing heartland of the Yangtze River Delta; the opening of the all-cargo flight route from Daxing Airport to Paris signifies a strong connection between international trunk lines and the demands of high-end manufacturing and cross-border e-commerce in Northern China. This means the starting point for cargo sourcing is moving significantly forward, from airport cargo terminals to customers' factory gates or even production lines.
In Wenaili's practice of serving freight forwarders, we find the traditional "wait-for-cargo" model is becoming obsolete. The new opportunity lies in whether companies can embed their service nodes, like "front-end cargo stations," in advance into industrial clusters or customers' supply chain plans. This requires marketing communication to shift from "what space we can book" to "how we can design an integrated export flow for your factory in East China, directly to the globe via the Suzhou front-end cargo station." It showcases deep understanding, resource integration, and flow design capabilities for emerging logistics hubs, which truly reflects professional value.
2. The "Intelligent Connection" of Operational Processes Drives the "Transparency" and "Digitalization" Upgrade of Freight Forwarding Value.
The launch of China Eastern Airlines Logistics' world-first smart cargo terminal focuses on breaking information barriers and achieving data-driven full-process collaboration. Meanwhile, the professional integration in air logistics between China Southern Airlines Group and China Merchants Group indicates that resource coordination is shifting from individual corporate efforts to ecosystem alliances. Intelligence and platformization jointly point to one goal: making cargo status visible, controllable, and optimizable throughout the entire journey, moving away from a "black box."
This directly defines the core demand of the new generation of shippers: they are purchasing not just transportation, but "deterministic supply chain status management." Therefore, the marketing focus for freight forwarders must shift from competing on price to demonstrating their "digital connectivity." For example, the digital customer platforms Wenaili helps partners build can not only provide a logistics tracking experience comparable to major e-commerce platforms but also proactively push key milestone notifications (like security clearance completion, customs release, flight departure) and anomaly alerts as a standard service. This method of building trust through data transparency forms the most solid foundation for customer loyalty.
3. The "Strategic Connection" of Industrial Ecosystems Requires the Evolution of the Freight Forwarder Role into a "Solution Partner."
In 2025, we observed air logistics becoming increasingly intertwined with industries like high-end manufacturing, cross-border e-commerce, and biopharmaceuticals. Whether it's the operation of customized cold chain trading centers serving specific industries or the new industrial aggregation model of "global ordering, near-airport cargo consolidation," it shows the industry is evolving from general services to specialized solutions deeply embedded in specific industrial chains.
For freight forwarders, the profit margin for generic services is shrinking, while the professional barriers of vertical industries are forming new moats. Wenaili's perspective is that future winners will be those "expert partners" who can select a track, delve deep into an industry, and communicate in the customer's language. This means a company's marketing content should no longer be generic self-introductions but rather deep insights and customized logistics solution white papers for target industries (such as new energy vehicles, precision instruments, cold chain pharmaceuticals). By consistently outputting professional content, freight forwarders can establish the perception of being the "most knowledgeable" logistics expert in the minds of specific industry clients, thereby evolving strategically from passive executors to active planners.
Conclusion: Defining New Value in "Connection," Driving New Growth with "Intelligent Chain"
The top ten events of 2025 collectively compose the overture for China's air logistics' transformation from "scale expansion" to "value creation." The deepening of physical networks, the intelligence of operational processes, and the integration of industrial ecosystems—these threefold "connection" trends are irreversible.
Facing this change, the real challenge for freight forwarders lies not in external shifts but in refreshing internal cognition and capabilities. Based on a decade of experience serving the freight forwarding industry, Wenaili Digital Marketing finds that successfully transforming companies are invariably those that first upgraded their marketing mindset: shifting their positioning from "transportation service provider" to "supply chain intelligent connection and value optimization partner."
Here, we invite you to review your own brand positioning and marketing system with Wenaili. We offer not just an online marketing plan but, based on deep insights into industry trends, the systematic capability to help you translate infrastructure dividends and technological change dividends into tangible brand advantages and customer trust. As the tides of the times surge, only those who actively evolve and intelligently chain the future can anchor their growth course for the next decade.