IN Brief:
- Open Market contributes 21 warehouses covering around 120,000m² and 13 cross-docking platforms.
- The operation adds an owned vehicle fleet, packaging, transport, and temperature-controlled logistics capability.
- Around 4,100 Open Market employees are expected to join DHL Supply Chain following completion.
DHL Supply Chain has agreed to acquire Colombian logistics and transport operator Open Market, adding 21 warehouses, 13 cross-docking platforms, an owned vehicle fleet, and temperature-controlled capability to its Latin American network.
The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions. Open Market’s warehouse estate covers approximately 120,000 square metres, while around 4,100 employees are expected to join DHL Supply Chain after completion.
The acquired business provides warehousing, transport, packaging, and temperature-controlled services across sectors including life sciences and healthcare, consumer goods, engineering, and manufacturing. DHL is placing particular emphasis on the healthcare capability as it expands its specialist logistics operations under the wider DHL Health Logistics strategy.
Pharmaceutical and medical-product logistics place additional controls around ordinary warehouse and transport activity. Temperature ranges may have to be maintained and documented, products require traceable handling, and an exception during storage or transport can affect whether goods remain suitable for release.
Open Market’s existing temperature-controlled warehouses therefore add operating capability rather than simply floor area. Integrating those facilities into DHL’s network gives the group an established Colombian base for customers whose freight requires more structured handling than standard ambient contract logistics.
The 13 cross-docking platforms add another layer to the transaction. Cross-docks are designed to move goods between inbound and outbound vehicles with limited storage, reducing dwell where schedules and information are sufficiently accurate for cargo to continue through the network without conventional put-away.
That efficiency comes with tighter coordination requirements. Late inbound loads, incorrect documentation, or mismatched vehicle schedules can disrupt several downstream movements, so transport planning and visibility have to work closely with the physical cross-dock operation.
Open Market’s owned transport fleet gives DHL direct control over part of that landside movement. The combination of warehouses, cross-docks, and vehicles allows inventory and transport decisions to be managed across the same domestic network instead of relying entirely on external capacity between facilities.
The acquisition also extends a period of investment by DHL in Latin America. DHL Global Forwarding acquired Aero Cargas in Uruguay earlier this month, creating its first direct operating presence in that country and adding pharmaceutical, project, free-zone, air, ocean, and regional inventory capability.
The Colombian transaction is different in both scale and business model. It sits within DHL Supply Chain rather than Global Forwarding and brings a sizeable contract-logistics estate, local road capacity, and more than 4,000 employees into the group.
DHL has also recently expanded its Constellation Distribution Center in Cota, near Bogotá. Adding Open Market would create a wider national set of facilities around that existing investment, although the company has not yet detailed how the acquired sites will be allocated, branded, or consolidated after completion.
That integration will extend beyond connecting warehouse-management systems. Twenty-one facilities bring individual customers, processes, equipment, leases, labour arrangements, and service histories, while the transport fleet adds vehicle maintenance, route planning, driver operations, and asset-utilisation requirements.
The workforce transfer is similarly material. Around 4,100 employees carry operating knowledge and customer relationships that will need to be retained while DHL introduces its own systems, governance, reporting, and network processes.
Specialist healthcare work makes that transition more sensitive. Standardising processes cannot interrupt validated storage conditions or weaken the documentation required by regulated customers, so integration plans have to preserve existing controls before seeking efficiencies across the combined network.
The seller has described the transaction as part of a strategy to concentrate investment and capabilities in Brazil, giving the divestment a separate strategic logic from DHL’s Colombian expansion. No purchase price has been disclosed.
The absence of a completion date also means the 21 warehouses and associated workforce should not yet be treated as fully integrated DHL assets. Closing conditions still have to be satisfied before ownership changes and the operational integration can begin.
Once completed, the network will give DHL considerably more domestic scale in a market where it sees rising demand for integrated logistics and transport. The combination of general contract logistics with temperature-controlled healthcare capability also broadens the types of customer operation the group can support from within Colombia.
The operating test will follow the transaction rather than the announcement. Capacity has been identified clearly — 120,000 square metres, 13 cross-docks, a vehicle fleet, and around 4,100 employees — but the value will depend on whether DHL can integrate that footprint without disrupting the customers and specialist processes already running through it.
