AUTOMOTIVE LOGISTICS ASIA CONFERENCE 2011

Just as China’s new car sale growth hardly missed a step throughout the global recession of 2009, Automotive Logistics China went ahead without a hitch -despite Iceland’s Eyjafjaliajokull volcano grounding most European flights and causing massive disruption to passenger movements and freight supply chains. But while there was discussion among the roughly 300 delegates attending over the backlog of car parts building up in Asia or Europe following the disruption, the circumstances only underlined what appears to be China’s unstoppable emergence for the automotive logistics industry.

In 2009 China sold more than 13m vehicles to become the world’s largest market and manufacturing base for automotive. By 2020 sales of vehicles in China should exceed 20m units, according to He Liming, executive vice president of the Chinese Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP). “Twenty million is a conservative estimate, and it will probably be more than 28m,” He said, based on findings from industry analysts and auto executives.