The world of logistics is firmly part of retail's ecosystem, where the effects on any constituent part reverberate across the system.

The growth of the internet has fuelled the haulage sector, which in turn has stimulated the exponential development and investment in the industrial and logistics property markets.

With retail consumer requirements for perpetually faster and lower costs of delivery, pressure has been put onto retailers who in turn have passed it on to the delivery network. Haulage and delivery operators in this sector have struggled to cope, as shown in this article. This new norm doesn’t appear to be sustainable – so where do we go from here?

With property investors wanting ever increasing returns from their investments, their tenants, such as the delivery operators, will need to start passing the costs back to the retailer to survive, and possibly then in turn to the consumer. Is the consumer ready to acknowledge what it takes for instant retail therapy or will it simply be a further cost the ever-stretched retailer has to absorb?