December 19, 2025 in Podcast
APL Logistics Expansion into France
April:
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today on the APLL Pulse Podcast. We have an exciting guest today. It’s Jean-Charles Le Du. He goes by JC, so we’ll be calling him JC today, but he is our senior business development manager in France. So JC, thank you so much for joining us. I want to hear about all the new stuff we have going on out there, but why don’t you go ahead and start us off with telling us a little bit about yourself?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Thanks April, for having me on this podcast. Very excited. So my name is Jean-Charles, but I go by JC, like you said. It’s much easier for everyone. I am based in Paris, France. I’m luckily based in this beautiful city. My background is mainly in the freight forwarding industry for the past 20 years. I work for different major freight forwarders, mainly in sales business development, or global account management. That’s my background.
April:
Okay. And I know that you’ve lived lots of places, right? You’ve kind of gone around the globe a little bit.
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yes. I lived in the US for a very long time, for 15 years, in New York, in Charlotte, North Carolina, in Denver, Colorado. I have two passports, so I have a US passport and a French passport. So that’s why I was very lucky to have many opportunities back and forth between France and the United States. Lately, I just moved back for APLL in May this year when I joined AP Logistics here in France.
April:
Such a benefit of a global company, having these opportunities to be in different cultures, go move different places. So I’m so glad that you were already here when we were ready to launch out in France. So let’s talk about that. So we have launched an office recently out in France. So what are some of the main benefits that you see of having an office located there?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
First thing I would say is that it comes from a request from some of our customers to be present in France, whether they are already themselves set up in France or they’re looking to do so in the future. So it’s not that we’re new to France, we’re just a new office of APL Logistics Europe in France, I would say. We already have a few customers here in France or global customers that are using APL Logistics with the final destination being France. So we’re not starting from scratch or from zero. It’s really a new continuation of API Logistics in Europe. It was a very logical option for us to go to France because of the centric geographical situation for France in Europe, and of course being one of the strongest GDP country in the continent. So yes, that was a logical next step for APL Logistics.
April:
Yeah. When did we actually open that office?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
It was created, I would say, before I joined in May. So I think it was at the beginning of the year, the legal part of APLL France was created in January 2025.
April:
Okay. So let’s go on and talk about some of the things that are unique to France. So what are some of the unique challenges that you think that we’re going to be facing there or that you’ve seen that we’re facing in France?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yes. Number one, I would definitely talk about the geopolitical instability that we see in the Red Sea area, which is between Africa and the Middle East, where all the ships coming from Asia, from China or Southeast Asia are using going up the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea into Fos Sur Mer for the South of France or to Le Havre for the northern part of France. And it’s been very much affected on the transit time, as we imagined, that now we have to go around Africa through the Cape of Good Hope up to northern Europe. So that has put a tremendous pressure on cost delays for raw material or finished goods. So our customer has been pushed to build resilience and really evaluate on the global sourcing strategy. So we see some customers now trying to not only source from this very far away places like Asia, but to also move some of their sourcing closer to France. That’s what we call reshoring. Reshoring is when they come back closer to their delivery point. The sourcing is closer to their delivery point.
April:
I feel like that’s been happening around the globe, right?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yes. It’s nothing new to France, but the reason why we had to do it is to cover this issue. And of course, this came from COVID. After COVID, so that there was big difficulties in semiconductors and all this to be so dependent on the Far East and to be so dependent on suppliers that everybody with very high concentration of sourcing. So I think now the goal is to diversify their suppliers and to reshoring those production and find suppliers that are closer to them to their market to counter this geographical and geopolitical issues.
April:
Makes sense. It really does. So going forward, how are we differentiating ourselves from other logistics providers in France? Because obviously there are other logistics providers in France and they have been there. And so how do you feel like we are differentiating ourselves?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yes, you’re right. There’s a lot of logistics providers in France. It’s a key market for all freight forwarding companies, carriers, or you name it. So yes, there’s big competition. I think what differentiates us from the competition is the large am ount of data that we gather from all our experience, all our customers, and that gives us a very predictive analytic system. It can provide our customer the truth of what is out there. It’s not only what the carrier says it is, it’s what we know it is. When a carrier say the port pair transit time that you’re looking, let’s say from a port in Asia to a port in Europe, it’s 30 days. Well, we know it’s wrong. We know it’s 37 days or 38 days. We have those data that can tell you exactly how many days it’s going to be. And that’s what our customer are going to be using and considering for their supply chain prediction and planning.
That’s extremely important because one week can make a big difference in supply chain, especially if you expect a high number of containers. If you have all your stuff ready for one day and actually the containers are coming seven days later, it’s impacting your supply chain very much. Because we also know that unfortunately in the world that we live in, the punctuality is no longer a standard. The standard is now to be late. Punctuality is almost a premium service. Actually, some carriers are considering being on time as a premium service and charge for it. It sounds very bizarre in our world, but this is the world we live in. This is our way to help our customer to overcome that issue of punctuality for the carriers.
April:
Right. It’s like, don’t just tell us what we want to hear. Tell us what’s actually true. The decades of experience that we have does help us to be able to tell them the truth about it, not just what they would want to hear.
Jean-Charles Le Du:
It’s one area where we can help our customers. Of course, we have many other services that we offer that can help our customers in PO management, in vendor management, in the origin consolidation. It’s going to mainly help them to move away from air freight and going into more ocean freight, and also moving away from small quantity shipping that is extremely costly. I’m talking about LCL, I’m talking about 20-foot containers that are very costly to logistics in your supply chain and moving into consolidating and do more 40s and load these containers to their maximum of capacity. I would say that these two things that are the most helping to our customers.
April:
What’s the biggest port in France?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
It’s Le Havre. So Le Havre is on the northwest of France. It’s one of the largest ports in Europe, and it’s very much used for entry point in France, from China, from Asia, from Southeast Asia, from India, of course. And it’s a big portal. So for the transatlantic business between, I would say the United States, but also South America. And then it’s Marseille. Marseille is very concentrated in the South. It’s in the Mediterranean Sea, very concentrated with Africa being so close. So with the ferries and going into the different countries of Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria that all board the Mediterranean Sea on the Africa side. Big on the automotive business, a lot of retail based in those countries that come into Europe via the Port of Marseille, but also they open to the rest of the world. A lot of goods are transiting to Marseille from different part of the world. So it’s also a very critical port for France.
April:
Well, with your depth of knowledge about this area and logistics in general and us as APLL, which products or services do you think are going to be a big hit in France?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
I think our technology of the LSS+ will be the most impacting product that we have, along with our predictive analytics system, OrderPilot, because we do see in France, a lot of companies lacking, struggling with insufficient real-time supply chain visibility. France government, or authorities, have launched a program called Logistics 4.0 by 2030, which should support the French companies, and sometimes you’d be very surprised by the name because you think they’re already there, but they’re actually not. So we need to have a big push on that, and especially to integrate digital technology like AI, IoT to optimize their planning and anticipation. So when you think about that, this is exactly what APLL offers. So we are right there. We’re at the right moment, at the right place in France to support us companies that need those products.
April:
That’s good. Right place, right time. That’s a good thing. Okay, what about my last question for you today is about kind of where we go from here? So I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but what do you see in APLL’s future when it comes to Europe?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yes. Well, my immediate future is obviously to develop as much as we can in this country, France. But as far as APL Logistics Europe, we know that we’re going to continue the expansion. That is for sure. It’s an organic growth that is strategically investing in, I would say, European-centric countries with strong GDP. So I would let APLL to communicate on the name of the countries themselves later on, but this is to ensure our customers that we have the proper footprint in the geographical coverage that they need. That’s our primary focus for this.
April:
But where are we right now? Where are we right now in Europe?
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Yeah. Well, in France now, we have a larger or longer presence in the UK, in Netherlands, and in Germany. So when you look at France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, those are the major key markets that you need to be in to start in Europe. I’m not saying that the other countries are irrelevant. I think this is the base, and that’s why it makes perfect sense now to invest into the French market.
April:
Yes, because we’ve been there for a while. We’re well invested in Europe. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your insight. We so appreciate you. And for all you listening out there, thank you for joining us today. We’ll catch you next time on the APLL Pulse Podcast.
Jean-Charles Le Du:
Thank you, April. Thank you everyone.
April:
Thanks for joining us today. If you like what you heard or if you have any questions about today’s episode, reach out to us at global_marketing@apllogistics.com. Make sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast apps. You’ll also find us on LinkedIn or visit us @apllogistics.com. We’ll see you next time on the APLL Pulse Podcast.
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