Skip to content
From Pallets to Parcels

Parcel is a customs business. You already own the hard part.

Cross-border parcel volumes are growing at 25% a year, and since de minimis ended in the US and EU, every one of those parcels needs the thing forwarders do best: customs. This is the working library for forwarder leadership teams weighing up the move. Numbers, mechanics, operator stories. No fluff, no pitch.

See it running on your lanes

A test drive puts you in the platform with sample parcel flows so you can see the clearance, billing and tracking work end to end. No pitch on the call unless you ask for one.

188bn
$

Cross-border e-commerce logistics market, 2026 

~25
%

Annual growth to 2035 

29 Aug
2025

US suspends de minimis; every parcel now needs entry 

1 Jul
2026

EU removes the €150 exemption 

Four reasons a forwarder should be looking at parcel

The market just mandated your core skill

De minimis is gone in the US and EU. Customs clearance is now compulsory on billions of parcels a year. You sell customs clearance. 

You already own the expensive parts

Licensed brokers, bonded facilities, deferment accounts, airfreight capacity on the right lanes. The gaps are a procurement project, not a decade of building. 

The revenue multiplies per parcel 

One consolidation earns one clearance fee today. Charged per parcel, the same freight earns roughly 25 times the revenue, on a customs team you already employ. 

The volume is going where you already are

A US$188bn market growing 25% a year, moving on the exact lanes e-commerce runs on. Your corridors. 

The Reframe

icon_Quicker Fulfillment

Stop comparing yourself to DHL

A cross-border parcel product is not a van network. It is item-level data, customs clearance and network orchestration. Licensed brokers, bonded facilities, deferment accounts, airfreight capacity on the exact lanes e-commerce moves on: the expensive parts are already on your payroll and balance sheet. What's missing? Parcel-level systems, last-mile contracts and a per-item rate card - is a procurement project, not a decade of capability building.

icon_Fewer Stockouts

One entry fee. Or 800 of them

Today a consolidated shipment with 800 parcels inside earns one clearance fee. Charged per parcel, the same freight earns clearance, duty handling and data compliance on every item, roughly 25 times the revenue, with a customs team you already employ. Clearance is the highest-margin product in the parcel stack because its marginal cost approaches zero once automated. That is the commercial case in one sentence.

ICONS_Label Formats & Routing Rules

De minimis is gone. Good

The US suspended it in August 2025. The EU removed the €150 exemption in July 2026. Business models built on duty-free thresholds are in trouble; businesses built on customs expertise just watched their core skill become mandatory on billions of parcels a year. Don't let de minimis scare you. It is the strongest argument for a forwarder entering parcel that any regulator has ever written.

Take the whole thing with you

The Library

Read the whole argument

You already own the hardest part of parcel
Parcel Operators

You already own the hardest part of parcel

Most of parcel's hardest capability is already on a forwarder's balance sheet. The asset audit: what transfers from forwarding, and the thr...

July 27, 2026

What retailers actually want from their delivery partners
Parcel Operators

What retailers actually want from their delivery partners

Supply chain leaders talk about what really drives parcel partnerships what wins is reliability service that fits the order AI built on dat...

June 29, 2026

Why go cross border in 2026 Part 7: Returns
Freight Forwarders

Why go cross border in 2026 Part 7: Returns

Returns make or break cross-border ops: manage duty refusals, visibility gaps, hidden costs, and refund times with a lane-by-lane returns m...

June 17, 2026