ARTICLE
Five Tensions That Defined Leaders in Logistics Summit 2026
1. Speed versus organisational inertia
Chris Peeters of bnode set the stakes on Day 1: “If you remain a traditional postal operator, you don’t have a future anymore.” Han Hendriks of Geotab put the AI version of the same point: “AI isn’t a train, it’s a rocket that has been launched and you have to be on the rocket to participate.“
Both statements assume the direction is settled. The harder question – one of the most popular of the summit – is whether the organisations responsible for delivering European logistics are structured to move at the pace the market now requires. Karsten Schwarz of DPD Germany: “To create a competitive advantage, you need to create something that isn’t copiable immediately.” Maarten Ree of FedEx: “Transformation is successful when not done in isolation.“
The speed imperative and the coordination imperative are both real. They do not always point in the same direction.
2. AI deployment: the gap between pilot and production
The HERE Technologies workshop spent an afternoon on one problem: why do most AI pilots in logistics never reach production? The breakout discussions surfaced familiar obstacles alongside less-discussed ones – how pilots are scoped, whether success metrics are designed to produce learning or just a green light, and what data readiness actually requires before deployment is worth attempting.
André of CTT: “For pilots to succeed, we need short-term projects, see quick results and learn from the issues.” Simon of Bettermile: “To have the AI itself is nothing without having the data coming from the ground up.” Nigel Rouch of XPO: “The way to maximise value from AI is training employees to ask it the right questions.“
The technology is not the ceiling. The organisation is. That observation came up in the workshop, in the digital transformation leaders’ forum, and in the questions submitted from the floor across both days. The most popular audience question on the topic: whether the industry is ready to trust AI agents to proactively manage internal systems, not just customer-facing applications.
3. The OOH opportunity and the fragmentation problem
The direction of travel on out-of-home delivery is not in dispute. Henning Gaudszuhn of DHL eCommerce: “You need to win checkout – you need to be present and have the right solutions.” The locker and PUDO networks are growing. Return rates via OOH are climbing. The data case is made.
The dispute is structural. The audience question that generated most discussion: whether multiple carriers maintaining separate locker networks across the same cities is an efficiency problem the industry is choosing to tolerate. The interoperability debate has been running for years. At this summit the audience was less patient about the lack of progress.
Laurens Himpe of bpost offered a different frame. The bbox boutique concept – a parcel locker designed to function as a retail destination – is an attempt to make the question of standardisation secondary by making the experience worth having. “Our bbox combines innovation in logistics, innovation in retail and innovation in community building.” A group of attendees toured the Brussels boutique on Day 2. The reactions suggested the concept is harder to dismiss in person than on a slide.
4. Retailer-operator relationships: who absorbs the shock
The retailer-LSP session and the Marketplace Logistics Forum operated on the same premise: that the important conversations in this area do not happen on standard panels, because the format does not create the conditions for honest disagreement.
The question that set the tone for the retailer-LSP session came from the floor: when a retailer depends entirely on 3PLs, where does accountability sit when things go wrong? The gainshare discussion got specific – what to share, whether bonus-malus clauses genuinely change behaviour or just create invoicing complexity, how you keep a long-standing partner performing when switching costs are high.
The Marketplace Forum, chaired by Julie Coxhill of Parcel2Go.com, worked through carrier orchestration at scale, SLA enforcement without alienating partners, and failover protocols that function mid-peak. It did not produce clean conclusions. That was the point. Tom Killeen of THG Brands: “The conversations happening here aren’t happening anywhere else.“
5. What the industry is becoming
The cross-border session made the external pressure concrete. De minimis reform, ICS2 compliance costs, tariff volatility, Chinese marketplace growth – the question of whether the ultra-cheap cross-border model has reached its practical limit was put to the panel. Nobody argued it had not.
The USO Reform workshop addressed the institutional version of the same question. As mail volumes fall and service obligation reform becomes unavoidable, what is a postal operator for? The breakout discussions covered repurposing infrastructure, reskilling workforces and accessing new revenue streams. The Space for Logistics and Innovation Task Force announcement – the European Space Agency and ALICE – pointed at one answer: logistics infrastructure connecting to something larger than the current network.
Okan Inaltay of ComCap on where investment is moving: “Private equity players are back in logistics, targeting more specialised, tech-enabled platforms.” Matthias Schanze of rethink Ventures on the startup generation: “Startups are now much better at pitching to investors.” Both observations point at a sector where tolerance for businesses that cannot demonstrate specific, defensible value is declining.
Chris Peeters had said it on Day 1. The USO workshop spent a morning working out what you become instead.
Leaders in Logistics Summit returns 9-10 March 2027 at SugarFactory, Amsterdam.
Ready to talk?
Book a call with me.
Ellie Kennedy
Senior Business Development Executive,
Leaders in Logistics
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