Wrapping up 2025: What the year held for the logistics industry

Instead of one single shock, 2025 was shaped by a series of overlapping pressures on a market already under strain. Persistent vessel oversupply, fragile demand, geopolitical disruption, and shifting trade policies all coincided with a rapid acceleration in digital adoption. The result was a year marked by volatility, without a clear, sustained recovery.

Ocean and air markets remained volatile throughout much of the year, forcing shippers to continually revisit routing, sourcing, and mode choices. Amid this uncertainty, digital tools enabling visibility, data-driven planning, and flexible routing became operational necessities across the industry. 

Market developments: Capacity, alliances & modal shifts

Overcapacity, bottlenecks & rates

The year opened with a sharp increase in new vessel capacity, just as demand began to soften. The surge in container ship deliveries, particularly in the first half of the year, added pressure to an already oversupplied market, most visibly on the Asia–Europe trade, where spot rates fell by more than 50% at multiple points, undoing the gains seen in late 2024.

At the same time, congestion in Northern European ports, driven by labor disputes, strained infrastructure, and weather-related disruptions, created localized bottlenecks that disrupted carrier schedules and undermined reliability. 

Red Sea rerouting lengthened transit times and tied up capacity without restoring rates. Even the traditional holiday-season uplift proved weak, with ocean rates staying soft and air freight seeing only limited seasonal improvement.

Carrier alliances reshape networks

The 2M Alliance between Maersk and MSC ended in 2025, replaced by the new Gemini Cooperation between Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, while MSC continued as a standalone carrier. These changes reshaped schedules and networks across major east–west trade lanes.

While the aim was to improve schedule reliability, cost efficiency, and network performance, the transition period created added complexity for both shippers and forwarders. Service loops changed, transshipment hubs shifted, and reliability varied significantly by corridor. As a result, shippers were increasingly required to plan further ahead and diversify routings to stay resilient. 

Modal shifts driven by tariffs

Trade policy uncertainty once again pushed operators to switch between air and sea–air options in 2025, with speed often taking priority over cost, particularly in response to key policy announcements.
While air cargo demand rose, pricing remained constrained by the continued return of passenger belly capacity, limiting the extent of any long-term rate recovery.

In this environment, the ability to quickly compare and choose between air, sea, and sea–air options with end-to-end visibility became critical for navigating tariff volatility and global disruption. Digital-first forwarders such as Forto, with multimodal services at their core, enabled faster mode switching and real-time decision-making under pressure.

Global forces: Geopolitics, tariffs & sourcing shifts

Geopolitical disruptions persist

Geopolitical instability became a long-term feature of logistics planning in 2025. Ongoing Red Sea security risks forced prolonged rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to some Asia–Europe journeys. Regional airspace restrictions continued to disrupt long-haul Asia–Europe air cargo corridors. Paradoxically, all of these geopolitical disruptions unfolded alongside persistent oversupply, meaning that while transit times increased, pricing power did not consistently follow.

How tariffs shaped behavior

Uncertainty around tariff changes once again drove short-term swings in demand throughout 2025. Each new announcement triggered waves of front-loading and booking spikes, followed by abrupt slowdowns as inventories were pulled forward.

This stop–start rhythm made forecasting especially difficult for shippers and carriers alike. Businesses no longer treated tariffs as something to plan around, but instead as short-term signals that compressed planning cycles. This, in turn, discouraged longer-term commitments with suppliers and increased reliance on live data.

Shifting sourcing patterns

In 2025, strategic sourcing continued to move away from single-country manufacturing in response to changing trade policies and tariff conditions. Southeast Asia, India, and intra-Asia trade lanes saw steady growth, while some US-bound cargo was restructured due to trade pressure.

Technology & AI: Adoption & integration

AI moves into the mainstream

2025 will be marked as the year digital technology moved from partial adoption into everyday operations. AI-driven forecasting, automated documentation, intelligent exception handling, and real-time visibility became part of daily workflows, allowing teams to focus on real disruptions and reduce reactive firefighting. In parallel, improved system connectivity and API-driven data flows helped reduce information gaps and data silos. 

Across the industry, digital tools shifted from being “nice to have” to part of the core operational infrastructure. However, large-scale adoption remains uneven. According to McKinsey’s 2025 State of AI report, nearly nine out of ten organizations now use AI in at least one business function, yet only around one-third have scaled AI across the enterprise. This gap underscores that while AI is now mainstream, its real value still depends on how deeply it is embedded in workflows, decision-making, and data structures.

Forto’s 2025 tech innovations

As a digital-first forwarder with data at the core of its platform architecture, Forto entered this new phase of AI adoption from a position of strength, enabling a fast, practical rollout of its two new AI-powered tools. 
Flash by Forto is an AI agent that automates large parts of the shipment lifecycle, from booking and vessel selection to document handling. It works as a co-pilot for Forto’s operations managers, allowing teams to focus on higher-value customer activities, while improving speed, consistency and service quality. 

Through its new SaaS platform FortoLabs, Forto introduced its first AI software product, LumoDoc, which automates document data extraction and processing and addresses one of the most time-intensive pain points in freight operations. By removing repetitive and error-prone manual handling, teams gain more time to focus on exceptions, customer support, and routing decisions rather than on paperwork.

“With our AI agent Flash, we’re already seeing impressive results, with 65% of requests handled with minimal human touch and accuracy above 95%. Flash empowers our operations teams, freeing up their time and augmenting their expertise so they can deliver a level of service quality that truly stands out.”

Francesco Foschetti
Director Product Management – Forto

Late-year snapshot (October–November 2025)

As the year moved into its final quarter, air cargo demand picked up slightly through October and November, helped by e-commerce flows and tariff-sensitive shipments. Additional capacity, however, continued to cap any meaningful rate rebound. Ocean freight told a similar story, with only brief seasonal lifts and little lasting change in market conditions shaped by oversupply and uneven demand.

The outlook for 2026

2025 was a year shaped by oversupply, disruption, and fragile demand, but also, more positively, by accelerated digital adoption and innovation across logistics. As the industry looks ahead to the first quarter of 2026, many of the same pressures are set to remain. Sea freight is likely to stay constrained by structural overcapacity, low rates, and ongoing geopolitical disruption. However, with some carriers tentatively testing Suez Canal transits, a gradual return to the route could begin in 2026, provided security conditions continue to improve. Air freight is expected to follow a steadier path, though increasingly shaped by shifts in sourcing and trade demand.

The key message heading into 2026 is that visibility, agility, and data-driven planning will remain vital for navigating the continuing market challenges.