Exclusive: DHL CEO discussing robot-powered warehouses with Hyundai, Hanjin

DHL CEO Tobias Meyer speaks during an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo and the Korea JoongAng Daily at DHL Korea’s office building in western Seoul on Jan. 7. [LIM HYUN-DONG]

 
DHL, a German logistics giant, set an important milestone for the Korean market in 2023 when it expanded the DHL Incheon Gateway to develop the site into an Asian logistics hub. 


Tobias Meyer, CEO of German logistics company DHL, is now looking farther to incorporate advanced robots and automation technology developed by Korean conglomerates like Hyundai Motor and Hanjin Group into its operation of logistics center. 
 
To make progress in its ongoing cooperation with Korean firms, the German CEO met with the chiefs of Hyundai Motor and Hanjin Group to enhance automation and electrification systems used in its operations during his three-day visit to Korea earlier this week.
 
DHL’s recent focus on sustainability and advanced logistics solutions has driven Meyer’s pursuit of new partnerships. His meetings with Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung and Hanjin Group Chairman Walter Cho were part of DHL’s search for partnerships that could develop and deploy tailored technology specific to the company’s logistics operations.
 
Deployment of Hyundai’s robotics technology and purpose-built vehicles (PBVs) is already underway or in the works.
 
The German company’s supply chain division, which is in charge of contract logistics for warehousing and distribution, signed a $15 million investment deal with Hyundai Motor’s Boston Dynamics in January 2022 to deliver and assign the Stretch robots in the unloading of boxes from trailers and containers.
 
Kia and DHL Korea entered a strategic partnership in November 2024 to integrate Kia’s PBVs into DHL Korea’s logistics operations, aligning with DHL’s goal to electrify 60 percent of its last-mile delivery fleet globally by 2030.
 
“We have a long track record in electric vehicles,” Meyer said at an exclusive interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily and the JoongAng Ilbo in DHL Korea’s office building in western Seoul on Tuesday, mentioning that DHL has produced about 28,000 EVs focusing on medium commercial vehicles.
 
“It’s a segment in which we’re particularly interested in different markets, including our post and parcel network. In Germany, we need large quantities of vehicles, and we are particularly interested in a midsize commercial vehicle for some of our operations [for] post and parcel operations in Germany. […] There is a discussion on medium and heavy-duty trucks, areas where the industry supply is not yet fully meeting our demands. And this is why we have discussions with different manufacturers around vehicles in these specific segments.”
 
DHL Supply Chain Korea entered a partnership with Hanjin in November 2024 to enhance its logistics capabilities in the industries of pharmaceuticals, auto and semiconductors.
 
The meetings were followed by Meyer’s first on-site tour of the newly expanded DHL Incheon Gateway, following a 131 million euro ($89,814) upgrade in 2023 that tripled its logistics capacity at Incheon Airport.
 

DHL CEO Tobias Meyer speaks during an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo and the Korea JoongAng Daily at DHL Korea’s office building in western Seoul on Jan. 7. [LIM HYUN-DONG]

 
Meyer, who took over as the CEO of DHL Group in May 2023, joined the company in 2013 as executive vice president of corporate development. He has occupied other head positions such as chief operation officer of DHL Global Forwarding and Post & Parcel Germany, as well as global business services. Before joining DHL, Meyer was a partner at Mckinsey & Company, primarily based in Frankfurt and Singapore, from 2001 to 2013.
 
Founded in 1969 as a post and parcel delivery service in Germany, DHL has evolved into a global logistics powerhouse with multiple divisions, including DHL Express, DHL Supply Chain, DHL Global Forwarding and DHL eCommerce Solutions. In 2023, the company generated 81.8 billion euros in revenue from its operations over 220 countries. 
 
The following are edited excerpts from the interview.
 
 
Q. It is known that logistics operations acquire a lot of manual work and are physically strenuous — which is why I believe that DHL would be quite interested in automation and other smart solutions to reduce that burden. What are some of the ways DHL is implementing such technology?
A. It is obvious that we are, as a logistics service provider and a very labor-intensive business. And as Korea faces, as well as many other more developed countries, the challenge of aging societies is the issue that we need to find ways to also make physically demanding jobs into jobs for life.
 
There are different ways that we are exploring. One is retaining colleagues. So for instance, in Germany, we have a program that enables the transition of parcel delivery carriers into truck driver roles, which is less physically demanding as they age. But technology is also a big enabler in making sure that jobs in logistics can remain jobs for life. And robotics plays an important role to take the physical strain out of the job and also make the job overall more productive.
 
We generally see robotics as more flexible than conventional automation, which has been around for many decades now, to ease the work of sorting in particular, but also picking operations — auto store, for instance, being one technology in that area.
 
 
DHL is aiming for a 50 percent revenue increase by 2030 with a focus on advancing supply chain sectors in the life science and health care sectors. What is the driver behind pinpointing those fields as new growth engines?
Life science and health care is a global priority for us for two reasons.
 
We see growing demand, which has to do with technological progress but also aging societies and older people needing more medical attention, typically, than younger people. So we see growth in this area, but we also see a change in the profile of both medical devices, as well as pharmaceutical products, particularly because temperature control becomes more important.
 
Temperature ranges become more diverse, and we need to adopt supply chains to be able to cater for that. And that's very much what we are doing and investing in.
 
It's also an area where our different business units will collaborate more closely, given that customers demand more integrated solutions for the distribution of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, which means investments in infrastructure, particularly cold chain warehouses, but also cold chain transportation chains.
 
 
Based on DHL’s 2023 earnings, the Asia-Pacific region is third by revenue proportion, with 15.2 billion euros, with Europe and the Americas accounting for 45.4 billion and 17.8 billion euros. What is DHL’s significance in the Asia-Pacific region, and what are your key areas of focus here?
The Asia-Pacific is very important to us, and we regard it as one of our whole markets.
 
“Nobody knows the Asia-Pacific like we do” was a DHL slogan we already used many years back. So we feel very much at home in Asia, and that cuts across all our business units that are predominantly active here.
 
We do recognize the growing intra-Asia trade, which is a priority for us — that we not only connect Asia to Europe and the Americas, but that we're also connecting Asia within itself.
 
That's particularly what DHL's supply chain is meant to do, to help manage global supply chains for our customers, the international transportation but also the global distribution [customers], and bring new logistics solutions to the different markets.
 

DHL CEO Tobias Meyer speaks during an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo and the Korea JoongAng Daily at DHL Korea’s office building in western Seoul on Jan. 7. [LIM HYUN-DONG]

 
You’ve just emphasized the importance of intra-Asia trading. In relation to that, domestic airlines’ cargo revenue has significantly increased since last year due to the influence of China’s cross-border e-commerce. Has DHL also been impacted by the surge of “C-commerce” from China?
Yes, e-commerce is an important growth trend for us globally.
 
We're involved in different parts of this in some countries as I mentioned. We are a large, also domestic, parcel carrier in some other countries including Korea, [but] we are not as present in that segment, and we focus more on the international transport of e-commerce. But we are also present in terms of local warehousing and distribution.
 
It depends very much on the setup of the e-commerce customer. Some of the big platforms do a lot of the logistics themselves, but for some smaller companies, we are a bigger part of their value chain and they rely more on DHL as their logistics partner given that they don't have the scale for [their] own operations.
 
So particularly small and medium enterprises are our primary DHL customers, and we can help them to expand their international presence, especially when it comes to e-commerce sales.
 
 
DHL has set green initiatives to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. What are the company’s ongoing efforts to reach this goal?
There are two main levers to reduce our carbon emissions. One is the renewal of the fleet.
 
We have an ongoing program especially, on our long distance intercontinental flying, which is a very significant part of our emissions that will go to the newest generation. We are still looking forward to taking delivery of several units of new Boeing 777 aircrafts next year.
 
Second is the increased usage of sustainable aviation fuels. DHL had the largest share of renewable fuels last year and the year before. However, we still have a long path to increase that to the 30 percent that we want to achieve by 2030. And we do that through partnerships with all producers of alternative aviation fuel.
 
So we have a broad program to acquire sustainable aviation fuel to put in our aircraft, and we also offer that service to our customers to decarbonize their supply chains.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]