Customs authorities handle half a million packages a day, e-commerce is booming

At the closing round table on the second day of the conference, experts discussed the fact that e-commerce is facing serious challenges across Europe. Mass parcel traffic is putting increasing pressure not only on logistics systems but also on market surveillance. Participants stressed that it is becoming increasingly difficult to filter out problematic or restricted products, while the European Union is expected to take a more uniform and stricter approach to regulating low-value shipments.

Budapest has become a regional cargo hub

József Kossuth, cargo director of Budapest Airport, highlighted in his presentation that 98-100 percent of air cargo traffic handled at Hungarian airports is concentrated at Budapest Airport. Budapest cargo volume increased by around 200 percent between 2017 and the beginning of 2026, while global air cargo traffic expanded by around 20 percent during the same period. Budapest cargo traffic now generates around 20 thousand jobs. Although e-commerce is growing spectacularly, it currently accounts for only about 20 percent of global air freight traffic, with the remainder still tied to traditional industries. Budapest has a strong position in the Central and Eastern European market, but competition is intensifying and direct transport options from regional airports are also expanding.

Lajos Hódosi, Managing Director of HUNGRAIL, spoke in his presentation that one of the biggest obstacles to the competitiveness of rail and intermodal freight transport is the situation of sidings. There is currently a labor shortage of 3,200 people in the sector, while 5.9 million overtime hours were completed at the MÁV-Volán group in 2023. According to the expert, the development of sidings is complicated by legal, technical, administrative and financial problems. The biggest challenges include the unsettled system of ownership, incomplete records and high operating and reactivation costs. According to Lajos Hódosi, in order to develop rail freight transport, the proportion of intermodal transport should be increased from 7 percent to 21 percent, while rail freight performance should be expanded by 50 percent by 2030.

The green transition is driven not by ideology, but by cost pressure

The participants in the panel discussion examining green transport agreed that it is not primarily client expectations but economic rationality that are driving companies towards more sustainable logistics operations today. Market players are rarely willing to pay more solely for sustainability reasons, which is why the spread of green solutions is mainly accelerated by rising energy costs and the pressure for efficiency. According to experts, modern vehicles, optimizing energy use, training drivers and diverting part of road volumes to rail can all contribute to reducing emissions in the sector.

At my roundtable on agricultural logistics, experts drew attention to the fact that in the pre-Covid period, Hungary exported 7-8 million tons of grain annually, but today the export markets have changed significantly. Corn exports are now marginal, while sunflowers have become increasingly important in the domestic crop structure. The country’s processing capacity can handle up to 1.8 million tons of sunflowers annually. It was stated during the discussion that agricultural production decisions are increasingly influenced by market and climatic uncertainties, which is why financiers also expect longer-term, more adaptive farming strategies from the actors.

University students also presented their research at the conference: the presentations examined the life cycle analysis of alternative drivetrains, the logistical challenges of oversized shipments, and the optimization of intermodal transport. The presentations and discussions showed that the future of the logistics sector is now being shaped simultaneously by the growing volumes of e-commerce, customs clearance and market surveillance challenges, railway infrastructure bottlenecks, and energy efficiency constraints.