Bangladeshi logistics is being rebuilt while it runs. Chittagong Port handled a record 3,531,118 TEU in the year to June 2026, up 7.13%, its strongest growth in seven years, on total cargo of 138.1 million tonnes across 4,336 vessels. Yet almost every container terminal in the country has changed hands or is about to. Saif Powertec's contract at New Mooring, which handles roughly 38% of the port's boxes, expired in July 2025 and was not renewed, leaving a Bangladesh Navy dry-dock company running it on a supposedly six-month interim mandate more than a year later. Laldia went to APM Terminals and the Pangaon inland terminal to an MSC subsidiary in November 2025, both signed within a day of their letters of award. A long-contested lease of New Mooring to DP World was ruled lawful in January 2026, abandoned in February after a port strike stranded more than 50 vessels, and only returned to negotiation in June. All of this sits under an export economy where ready-made garments were 80.6% of exports in the year to June 2026, and fell slightly. This 2026 guide profiles ten providers with the strongest footprint in Bangladesh, listed in no particular order, drawn from Chittagong Port Authority statistics, exchange filings and company reporting.
How we chose this list
This is an editorial guide, compiled from public sources such as annual reports, company accounts, regulatory filings and trade media, rather than from paid placements or our own directory data. We weighed four things:
- Scale in Bangladesh: revenue, sites, fleet and employees based in the country.
- Breadth of services: freight forwarding, contract logistics, haulage, parcels and terminal operations.
- Track record: years operating in Bangladesh and publicly verifiable results.
- Network: domestic coverage plus international connections.
Figures are the most recent publicly reported at the time of writing. The companies appear in no particular order. A provider further down the page may well be the better fit for your specific lane or freight type.
The 10 companies at a glance
| Company | Type | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Summit Alliance Port Limited | Listed off-dock and inland terminal operator | The largest private off-dock in the country, plus inland waterway terminals |
| RSGT Bangladesh | Container terminal concessionaire | Patenga Container Terminal, the country's first internationally operated terminal |
| Chittagong Dry Dock Limited | Navy-owned interim terminal operator | Running New Mooring, the busiest container terminal, on a temporary mandate |
| APM Terminals | Container terminal concessionaire | The Laldia terminal concession, awarded in November 2025 |
| MGH Group | Diversified logistics and airline agency group | The largest airline sales agency house, and the first private container terminal |
| Expo Freight Limited | Freight forwarder and customs broker | The largest Bangladeshi-owned garment freight forwarder |
| EFL Global | International freight forwarder | Long-established subcontinent forwarding with deep Bangladesh operations |
| Karnaphuli Group | Shipping agency and port services group | The dominant container feeder agency at Chittagong |
| Pathao Courier | E-commerce parcel courier | The default last-mile network for Bangladeshi online sellers |
| Sundarban Courier Service | Traditional domestic courier network | The oldest mass-market parcel network, reaching where e-commerce couriers do not |
Summit Alliance Port Limited
Summit Alliance is the only Dhaka-listed pure logistics operator, which makes it the only company on this list with audited numbers you can check. For the year to 30 June 2025 it reported profit of 674.96 million taka, up 63%, with earnings per share of 2.85 taka and net asset value of 35.67 taka a share. It paid an 18% cash dividend, and its market capitalisation was about 14.0 billion taka in early September 2026.
Read the trajectory carefully, though. Nine-month earnings per share for the year to June 2026 came in at 1.62 taka, which annualises below the 2.85 taka full-year figure for 2025, and the full-year result had not been published. Note also what the business actually is: an off-dock container freight station rather than a quay operator, plus Muktarpur, the first private inland water terminal in Bangladesh, and three river terminals in Kolkata and Patna run in partnership with India's Inland Waterways Authority.
Best for: container stuffing, off-dock handling and inland waterway movement, with published accounts to check.
RSGT Bangladesh
Red Sea Gateway Terminal's Bangladeshi subsidiary signed a 22-year concession with the Chittagong Port Authority in December 2023, making it the first international terminal operator in the country. It committed about 30 million US dollars for four ship-to-shore cranes from China's SANY, after buying 14 rubber-tyred gantries for 26 million.
Those cranes were expected to lift Patenga's capacity from 250,000 TEU a year to 600,000. Until they were working the terminal could only handle geared vessels and, as of early 2025, only export containers. Confirm what it is actually handling on your trade before planning around it: we could not verify current throughput from a primary source.
Best for: export containers through Chittagong where an international operator's standards matter.
Chittagong Dry Dock Limited
New Mooring handles roughly 38% of Chittagong's containers, about 1.26 million TEU in 2024. Saif Powertec's contract there expired on 6 July 2025 and was not renewed, and Chittagong Dry Dock Limited, a Bangladesh Navy company, took over under what was described at the time as a six-month interim appointment, retaining the existing workforce.
It was still running the terminal in June 2026, roughly a year in, with the port authority saying only that the government would decide the future operator in the national interest. This is the single biggest open question in Bangladeshi logistics, and it is worth asking your carrier how it is affecting berth windows on your service.
Best for: not something you choose, but the operator currently handling most of the country's containers.
APM Terminals
Maersk's terminal arm won the Laldia Container Terminal concession, with a letter of award on 16 November 2025 and the agreement signed the following day. The process was notably compressed: proposals were submitted on 4 November, technically evaluated on the 5th and financially on the 6th, negotiated between the 7th and 9th, and approved by the cabinet committee on the 12th, against a transaction adviser's recommendation that the sequence take 62 days.
The terminal is not built. Treat APM Terminals here as future capacity rather than a berth you can book today, and note that the public-private partnership authority's own project page still had not been updated to reflect the signing as of January 2026.
Best for: planning ahead on Chittagong capacity rather than for current bookings.
MGH Group
Founded in 1992 by Anis Ahmed, MGH runs freight forwarding, liner and shipping agency, airline general sales agency work and customs brokerage, with its own operations in 26 countries. It is Singapore-headquartered but Bangladeshi-founded, and its agency business is what gives it leverage over air cargo space.
In April 2026 its Transmarine Logistics subsidiary won a competitive bid for a 20-year lease on seven acres at Patenga from the Chittagong Port Authority, at 15 crore taka a year, to build the first privately developed container terminal in Bangladesh. The stated plan is 550 crore taka of initial investment, a 250 metre jetty, monthly handling capacity of 40,000 TEU and 3,500 TEU of yard, built in about 18 months. It sits 2.6 nautical miles from the Karnaphuli estuary, closer to open sea than any other terminal at the port.
Best for: air cargo where agency access to space decides whether you fly, and agency-backed ocean freight.
Expo Freight Limited
Part of Expo Group, which moved into freight in 1993 on the back of the apparel boom and added airline general sales agency work from 2002, Expo Freight runs air, sea and multimodal forwarding plus warehousing and customs brokerage out of Tejgaon in Dhaka.
It describes more than 30 years of experience, over 250 partners worldwide and more than 2,000 staff across Bangladesh. Those figures are company-stated and undated, and it publishes no accounts, which is normal for the sector. It earns its place as the leading locally owned principal rather than a multinational's branch office, which matters when something goes wrong and you need a decision made in Dhaka.
Best for: apparel exporters who want a Bangladeshi principal with real customs-brokerage depth.
EFL Global
EFL is worth including partly because it is so often misdescribed. It was founded in Sri Lanka in 1982, expanded into Bangladesh, India and Mauritius, rebranded from Expolanka to EFL, and was fully acquired in 2024 by its Japanese parent SG Holdings. It is not a Bangladeshi company, and it is an entirely different business from Bangladesh's own Expo Freight despite the similar name.
The group reports 39 countries, more than 70 owned offices and over 3,000 employees, with Bangladesh sitting inside its Indian Subcontinent region. For an apparel exporter it is one of the few forwarders combining genuinely long-run local presence with a well-capitalised parent.
Best for: exporters wanting subcontinent lane depth behind a substantial parent company.
Karnaphuli Group
Founded in 1954, Karnaphuli is the incumbent agency house at Chittagong. On its own figures for the 2020-21 financial year, group companies handled 1,239,179 TEU, around 45% of Bangladesh's total container throughput of 2,782,301 TEU across Chittagong and Mongla, and 456 of the 1,339 container feeder vessel calls, or 34%.
Two caveats before you use those numbers. They are five years old and the group has published nothing more recent, so treat the share as historic rather than current. And do not confuse the group with the Dhaka-listed Karnaphuli Insurance, which is an insurer and carries none of this business, despite the shared name.
Best for: feeder services and agency handling at Chittagong, where the incumbent relationship counts.
Pathao Courier
Pathao began in 2015 as a ride-hailing app, and its courier arm is now the default for e-commerce and social commerce. It publishes its rates, which most competitors do not: 60 taka up to 500 grams, 70 taka to one kilo and 90 taka for one to two kilos on same-city 24-hour delivery, plus 1% of the cash-on-delivery value.
It raised 12 million US dollars in a pre-Series B round led by VentureSouq in September 2024, taking total capital raised past 50 million, and said at the time it had been profitable for two years. Treat its network claims with more caution than its prices: its own courier page simultaneously claims 200,000 businesses served and 3,000 merchants, which cannot both be current.
Best for: domestic business-to-consumer parcels and cash on delivery across all 64 districts.
Sundarban Courier Service
Operating since 1983, Sundarban is the household-name parcel network and predates Bangladeshi e-commerce entirely. Its public branch directory lists 800 locations with names and street addresses, which is the one figure on its site solid enough to cite.
The rest contradicts itself, quoting 600 outlets in one place, 160 branches in another and 100 offices plus 500 agents in a third, and the about page still carries placeholder filler text. Judge it on the branch directory and on reach into remote upazilas rather than on tracking quality or digital experience.
Best for: low-cost documents and small parcels into remote areas where reach beats visibility.
Names you might expect that are not on this list
A few companies appear in almost every guide to this market but should not, because their situation has changed:
- Saif Powertec: For years the answer to who runs Chittagong's container terminals, having operated both the Chittagong Container Terminal and New Mooring since their inception. Its New Mooring contract expired on 6 July 2025 and was not renewed. It is reported still to hold the Chittagong Container Terminal and to be seeking re-entry to New Mooring at the head of a consortium, but neither could be verified from a primary source and its own domain does not resolve.
- Paperfly: Still listed in most guides to Bangladeshi logistics, and its website still loads. The company ceased operations in September 2023, putting around 1,000 jobs at risk, after India's Ecom Express took more than 80% in 2021 and a promised follow-on investment never arrived. A live domain is not evidence of a working network.
- DP World: Frequently described as the operator of New Mooring. It is not. A lease was ruled lawful in January 2026, then abandoned in February after a port strike stranded more than 50 vessels, with negotiations resuming in June 2026 and DP World seeking a 30-year term against a financial model built on 15. The port authority's own evaluation concluded the proposed revenue share was neither financially favourable nor commercially sustainable.
How to choose between them
The right provider depends less on overall size than on fit with your freight and lane:
- Containers through Chittagong: RSGT at Patenga for an international operator, with New Mooring's future still unresolved.
- Apparel export forwarding: Expo Freight for a Bangladeshi principal, EFL Global for regional depth and a stronger balance sheet.
- Air cargo: MGH Group, where general sales agency relationships determine whether you get space at all.
- Off-dock and inland: Summit Alliance Port Limited, the only operator here with audited public accounts.
- Domestic parcels: Pathao for e-commerce and cash on delivery, Sundarban for remote reach.
Whoever you shortlist, get more than one quote, because rates for the same lane can vary widely, and confirm licences, insurance coverage and references for your specific freight type. Our guide to the best websites to find a freight forwarder covers how to run that comparison, and the credentials you can check yourself covers verifying them.
Compare Bangladesh logistics providers in one place
The ten companies above are the biggest names, but they are not always the best-priced option for a specific shipment, and independent forwarders often handle SME import and export work more attentively than the majors. CargoLinked's directory lists more than 650 logistics companies and freight forwarders based in Bangladesh, which you can browse by service and location. If you have cargo to move, you can also post your shipment for free and collect quotes from interested forwarders instead of contacting providers one by one.
