UPS investing $2 billion in international and other businesses

United Parcel Service is investing more than $2 billion into its business across its international, healthcare and supply chain solutions businesses, the company told CNBC exclusively on Monday.

The ongoing investments began in 2024 and will continue through 2028, but UPS said it had not previously disclosed the total investment. The shipping giant said the aim is to help businesses move faster and stay adaptable to changing macroeconomic pressures and global supply chain disruptions.

“These investments are really aligned to one of our big strategic areas of focus, which is creating capabilities to enable our customers, particularly in complex industries, to more effectively run their global supply chains,” Scott Szwast, vice president of international strategy, told CNBC.

Some of the projects under the investment include a new hub in the Philippines this year, a new Canadian facility opening next year in Ontario and a new air hub at Hong Kong International Airport in 2028.

UPS has launched a tech-enabled logistics center in Taiwan and a supply chain solutions facility in Amsterdam that combines freight, brokerage and cold-chain solutions. Szwast said the new logistics center in Taiwan has been able to leverage automation and robotics to increase the total supply chain speed by a day.

The logistics company also said it now has flights running five times a week between Paris and Hong Kong and between Shenzhen, China, and Sydney to meet growing demand.

Szwast said as global supply chains get more complicated, certain global markets, like those across Asia, are becoming more important for companies than they were before.

“What they find in a lot of cases is that their supply chains look more like their histories than their strategies,” he said. “They need very agile, very effective solutions to connect these new parts of their businesses. They need a lot of optionality and a lot of flexibility, and that’s what we’re investing in.”

UPS also recently announced a $48 million investment into 27 temperature-controlled facilities across its network to supplement its healthcare initiatives, including the shipment of temperature-sensitive medications like GLP-1 drugs. That announcement came as logistics companies around the globe are racing to stay ahead of growing demand in niche areas like cold-chain storage.

Especially as macroeconomic pressures disrupt global supply chains, Szwast said, businesses have been increasingly trying to ensure they don’t have “all their operational eggs in one basket.” At the same time, those companies are also innovating new products with new shipping needs at rates not seen before, he added.

Szwast said the investments will help UPS differentiate its end-to-end logistics offerings, ensuring the logistics company can equip businesses from the first step to the last step of the shipping process.

“We’re investing to give them tailored capabilities aligned to the needs of their specific industries that cover the markets they’re increasingly sourcing from and distributing to, and do it in a way that they can make commitments to their customers,” Szwast said.