Rotterdam is still Europe's largest port, but 2025 was the year its numbers stopped pointing the same way. Total throughput fell 1.7% to 428.4 million tonnes while container volume rose 3.1% to 14.2 million TEU, and transhipment dropped 15.9% in TEU terms, which the Port Authority attributes plainly to congestion at the quays pushing volume to other ports. Schiphol handled 1.43 million tonnes of air cargo, down 4%, though the first half of 2026 recovered 10%. The structural answer to the congestion is already being built: APM Terminals Maasvlakte II is adding a second kilometre of deep-sea berth, four more rail tracks and yard capacity to reach around 5.4 million TEU, and in August 2026 Hapag-Lloyd agreed to take 25% of it. Meanwhile the country's postal operator is in open dispute with its own government over whether universal delivery can be funded at all. This 2026 guide profiles ten providers with the strongest footprint in the Netherlands, listed in no particular order, drawn from annual reports, port authority data and company disclosures.
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 the Netherlands: 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 the Netherlands 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 |
|---|---|---|
| PostNL | Listed postal and parcel operator | The only nationwide postal network, and the largest Benelux parcel operator |
| Royal Vopak | Listed tank storage operator | Independent bulk liquid and gas storage, headquartered in Rotterdam |
| Samskip | Multimodal shortsea and intermodal operator | Running Rotterdam as the hub of a European shortsea, rail and barge network |
| Vos Logistics | Road haulage and contract logistics | International bulk and high-volume road transport out of Brabant |
| Broekman Logistics | Independent port and contract logistics group | Breakbulk and heavy-lift handling in Rotterdam, still family-owned |
| Jan de Rijk Logistics | European road transport and air cargo trucking | Road feeder services connecting Schiphol to European airports |
| APM Terminals Maasvlakte II | Container terminal operator | Rotterdam's expanding deep-sea terminal, and a Gemini hub |
| DHL Group | Global integrator | The largest single logistics employer in the Netherlands |
| DSV | Global freight forwarder | The largest forwarding network in the country after absorbing Schenker |
| Rhenus | Diversified logistics operator | Warehousing in Brabant and Limburg plus Rotterdam port handling |
PostNL
PostNL reported revenue of 3,324 million euros for 2025, up 2%, but operating income fell 72% to 11 million and the group made a loss for the year of 17 million against an 18 million profit in 2024, with free cash flow of minus 25 million. Parcel volume grew 1.2% to 376 million items while addressed mail fell 4.8% to 1,529 million.
The regulatory position is the story, and it is unusually stark. PostNL asked the government to reimburse the net cost of the universal service obligation, 30 million euros for 2025 and 38 million for 2026. The minister refused, rejected the subsequent objection, and PostNL has appealed to the courts. It then asked to be relieved of the universal service designation altogether, and that was refused too. The government has proposed relaxing delivery standards to two days from July 2026 and three days from July 2027; PostNL called the proposals insufficient and said the postal business would remain lossmaking until at least 2029. A regulator investigation into its 2019 Sandd acquisition reopened in February 2026.
Best for: Dutch and Benelux business-to-consumer parcel distribution at genuine national coverage.
Royal Vopak
Vopak is not a freight forwarder and it is worth saying so, because it appears on most Dutch logistics lists. It stores bulk liquids and gases. For 2025 it reported revenue of 1,299 million euros, net profit including exceptional items of 604 million, up 61%, and earnings per share of 5.23 euros, up 68%, on a proportional occupancy rate of 91% for the year and 92.4% in the fourth quarter.
Those exceptional items included a 181 million euro reversal of earlier impairments on its Europoort operations. It has committed to shareholder distributions of around 1.7 billion euros through to the end of 2030, including a buyback of up to 500 million, alongside an ambition to invest 4 billion by 2030. Recent commitments include an additional jetty at the Gate LNG terminal in Rotterdam and a 200 megawatt battery storage project in the Netherlands.
Best for: bulk liquid and gas shippers needing Rotterdam tank capacity. Irrelevant if your cargo is containerised.
Samskip
Headquartered in the Waalhaven in Rotterdam, Samskip is built around getting containers off the road. It describes 125 shortsea departures and 70 rail departures a week, a fleet of 18,500 containers and 31 offices worldwide, though those are undated figures from its own site rather than reported ones.
In July 2024 its affiliate Festing acquired 50% of Matrans Rotterdam Terminal to form a joint venture building a new Rotterdam terminal and hub for containers and breakbulk, subject to Dutch competition clearance. Its ultimate shareholder structure is not published, and the sources that claim to know it are content-farm pages rather than filings, so treat any statement about who owns Samskip with suspicion.
Best for: European shippers wanting to shift volume from road onto shortsea or rail out of Rotterdam.
Vos Logistics
Based in Oss, Vos reported turnover of 356 million euros for 2025, broadly flat, but operating profit rose 246% to 9.3 million and net profit reached 4.5 million against roughly break-even the year before. It runs about 2,400 employees, 1,000 vehicles, 3,700 load units and 275,000 square metres of storage, split fairly evenly between its solutions and international transport segments.
The ownership changed while most directories were not looking. France's Jacky Perrenot Group announced its acquisition in November 2025 and completed it on 28 April 2026 after regulatory approvals, creating a group with close to 1.7 billion euros of revenue and more than 12,000 employees across Europe. Chief executive Frank Verhoeven stayed. Anyone describing Vos as an independent Dutch haulier is working from pre-2026 information.
Best for: full-truckload and high-volume road freight between the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, now with French domestic reach attached.
Broekman Logistics
Founded in 1960 as a shipping agent in the Port of Rotterdam and family-owned ever since, Broekman describes annual turnover of around 250 million euros and 1,000 employees, positioning itself as a top 20 Dutch logistics player. It runs 18 storage locations with 500,000 square metres of covered warehousing, a breakbulk terminal with 20,000 square metres indoors and 40,000 outdoors, more than 20 European locations, 18 offices in India and a Shanghai office.
Those figures sit on an undated page, so treat them as company-stated rather than reported. What makes it worth shortlisting is structural rather than numerical: in a market where nearly every large operator is foreign-owned, Broekman is an independent Dutch company that can put quay handling and hazardous-goods warehousing under one accountable owner.
Best for: project cargo, breakbulk and hazardous goods through Rotterdam where one owner for quay and warehouse matters.
Jan de Rijk Logistics
Founded in 1971 as a family business in Roosendaal, Jan de Rijk is the Dutch specialist in air cargo road feeder services, the trucking that moves airfreight between airports rather than to consignees. It describes 850 trucks, 1,200 trailers, 1,300 employees, 19 offices, 110,000 square metres of storage and 60 airports served, with further Dutch sites at Geldrop, Eindhoven and Beilen.
Those are undated company figures and it publishes no accounts, and its ownership is not stated publicly either. It appears here for capability rather than disclosure: if your freight flies into Schiphol and needs to reach another European airport on a controlled, time-definite basis, this is the specialism.
Best for: time-critical air cargo road feeder work and pharma or high-tech lanes out of Schiphol.
APM Terminals Maasvlakte II
Operational since 2015, the terminal is in the middle of the expansion that answers Rotterdam's congestion problem: a second kilometre of deep-sea berth taking the total to 2,000 metres, extra yard capacity, four additional rail tracks and automated terminal tractors, moving it toward annual capacity of about 5.4 million TEU.
In August 2026 Hapag-Lloyd agreed to acquire 25% of APM Terminals Maasvlakte II, with APM Terminals keeping operational control and the stake sitting under Hapag-Lloyd's Hanseatic Global Terminals arm. The terminal is described by both parties as a key European hub for the Gemini Cooperation between Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk, which is the practical reason it matters to shippers: carrier alliance structure and terminal ownership are now the same conversation.
Best for: deep-sea container volume through Rotterdam, particularly on Gemini services.
DHL Group
DHL employed 21,232 people in the Netherlands at the end of 2025, up 5.7% from 20,094, making it the group's seventh-largest country by headcount and one of only four that grew. Group revenue was 82.8 billion euros with operating profit of 6.1 billion.
Its Dutch growth has been specifically in e-commerce rather than forwarding. It consolidated the parcel-locker network De Buren Internationaal from 2 June 2025 for 6 million euros and took full ownership of fulfilment provider Monta in April 2025, and its own annual report names the Netherlands among the countries taking most of its e-commerce division capital expenditure. Note that the widely reported job cuts of around 8,000 were specific to its German post and parcel division, not the group and not the Netherlands, where headcount rose.
Best for: shippers wanting express, forwarding, contract logistics and e-commerce fulfilment on one Dutch contract.
DSV
DSV completed its acquisition of Schenker from Deutsche Bahn on 30 April 2025 at an enterprise value of 14.3 billion euros, consolidating it from 1 May, which roughly doubled the business and reshaped Dutch forwarding along with everywhere else. Integration was expected to finish during 2026.
Its Dutch marketing material claims more than 40 branches, over 5,000 colleagues and more than a million square metres of warehousing, but those figures carry no date and predate the Schenker integration in any case, so treat them as indicative. One small accuracy point worth carrying: DSV describes itself as a world-leading player rather than the world's largest forwarder, which is a claim usually attributed to it by third-party rankings rather than by DSV.
Best for: air and ocean volume leverage on Asia to Europe lanes, with the caveat that integration was still running through 2026.
Rhenus
Rhenus runs one of the denser Dutch networks of any foreign-owned group, with 46 Dutch locations across its own published records, concentrated at Schiphol, Hillegom, Rotterdam and Tilburg, and covering air and ocean forwarding, road, warehousing, customs and port logistics through entities including Rhenus Logistics B.V. and Rhenus Air and Ocean B.V.
It operates at the Maasvlakte Deep Sea Terminal and the Waalhaven Terminal, handling project cargo, breakbulk and containers, and took full ownership of the Rotterdam-based LBH Group in April 2026. Be careful with its warehouse counts: its own pages give six warehouses in one place and seven certified sites in another, so the location total is the more defensible figure.
Best for: combining certified warehousing in the Brabant and Limburg corridor with port handling in the same group.
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:
- Kloosterboer: Still named in most guides as the Dutch cold-chain and port specialist. Its domain now redirects to onelineage.com and the Kloosterboer name does not appear on Lineage's homepage. The capability is real and sits inside Lineage Netherlands, but Kloosterboer is no longer an independent Dutch operator you can appoint under that name.
- Kuehne+Nagel: Unquestionably one of the largest forwarders operating in the Netherlands, and it belongs on any tender list. It is left out here because it publishes no Netherlands-specific figures at all, so there is nothing to compare it on alongside the others. For the record, its founder Klaus-Michael Kuehne died on 24 August 2026 aged 89, and Stefan Paul remains chief executive.
How to choose between them
The right provider depends less on overall size than on fit with your freight and lane:
- Containers through Rotterdam: APM Terminals Maasvlakte II for deep-sea and Gemini services, Samskip to move volume onto shortsea or rail instead.
- Forwarding at scale: DSV for post-Schenker air and ocean leverage, DHL where forwarding and e-commerce fulfilment sit on one contract.
- Warehousing: Rhenus across the Brabant and Limburg corridor, Broekman where hazardous goods and quay access matter.
- Road freight: Vos Logistics for full loads into Europe, Jan de Rijk for airport-to-airport feeder work.
- Parcels and bulk liquids: PostNL for Benelux parcels, Vopak if your cargo is bulk liquid rather than boxed.
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 the Netherlands 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 150 logistics companies and freight forwarders based in the Netherlands, 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.
