THE LOADSTAR’S newly published State of AI in Supply Chain survey, run across more than 200 executives worldwide, puts a number on where competitive advantage is heading: 65.8% expect data quality and integration, not AI sophistication, to separate leaders from laggards within two to three years. Just 22.2% have tangibly deployed AI at scale. That gap between expectation and execution is the story, and it is not really a story about AI.
It is a story about organisational capability, and about who has the will and the resources to build it before the gap closes. The survey's own explanation for the shortfall confirms this: 53.8% cite a lack of in-house AI expertise and change management as the primary blocker to scaling, and 48.7% cite integration with legacy systems. The technology is available and increasingly capable. What is scarce is the internal capacity to restructure processes and data around it.
Twelve months ago, at the CBAFF national conference, I described the forwarding industry's choice as a barbell: consolidate at scale or specialise in deep, defensible expertise, because the middle would be most disrupted by digitalisation. That argument was directional then. It is closing in on something closer to fact now, and the Loadstar data explains why the middle is moving faster than expected.
If even well-resourced organisations cannot build integrated AI capability on their own timeline, a mid-sized operator weighing whether to fund that transformation internally or sell into a platform that has already solved it is not really choosing between two equally viable paths. Building takes capital, talent, and years that most do not have. Selling into scale buys the capability immediately. That calculation, more than any grand consolidation thesis, is what has kept the acquisition pace from the DSV–DB Schenker deal in September 2024 running without pause.
At the end of June, CMA CGM and CEVA Logistics moved for FedEx Supply Chain at US$1.4 billion, a close expected later in 2026. Read alongside the Loadstar findings, it looks less like an ocean carrier buying landside revenue and more like a carrier buying the connected, data-driven operating model that forwarders themselves are struggling to build.
Australia and New Zealand are not seeing deals of that size, but the same sorting is visible if you know where to look. At the scale end, DP World Australia's acquisition of Silk Logistics, completed in August 2025, is the clearer read: a global terminal operator moving beyond the quay line into landside transport, warehousing and container logistics, buying control over the flows it used to hand off to others rather than simply adding revenue. At the specialist end, Kalgin's April acquisition of JF Ross Customs Brokers remains the cleanest local example of a business bought for a specific, defensible capability rather than for scale.
What sits between those two ends is thinning, not holding steady. Every founder-owned, mid-market forwarder and customs broker now faces the same three-way choice, and the decision window is not indefinite: consolidate the market itself, if it has the capital and appetite to be the acquirer rather than the acquired; sell into someone else's scale; or narrow deliberately into a niche defensible enough to stand alone. What is disappearing is the fourth option, staying broadly capable, moderately specialised, and waiting to see how this plays out.
Since the DSV–Schenker deal opened this cycle in September 2024, announced or completed forwarding and 3PL transactions globally have run at ten to twelve per six months, with no slow half-year yet recorded. The deal mix has also broadened, from a handful of anchor transactions early on to a steady stream of specialist bolt-ons now, including cold chain, healthcare logistics, customs brokerage and tech-enabled brokerage. This is not a small market correction. It points to a market being restructured.
The pressure is not coming from AI alone. Electronic bills of lading and MLETR-aligned documentation are moving from optional to expected across the same trade lanes, adding a second, parallel demand for connected data and digitised processes just as the AI capability gap is being priced into acquisition decisions. An operator facing both fronts at once has less room to defer either.
Technology is beginning to drive the industry's restructuring. AI, automation and digital platforms are accelerating a divide between businesses that can scale efficiently and those that create value through specialist capability. The recent wave of ANZ acquisitions reflects this shift. For freight forwarders and 3PLs, the strategic choices are becoming clearer: invest to achieve scale, build a defensible specialisation, or join a larger organisation. The middle ground is shrinking rapidly, and as technology continues to raise the competitive bar, standing still is becoming the riskiest strategy of all.