Asian and US ports have been warned they need to carry out upgrades to match accelerating trade growth.

Senior managers at logistics giant DHL said that port and infrastructure investment in India and the US was “lagging behind”.

Kelvin Leung, CEO North Asia-Pacific at DHL Global Forwarding, said: “India is trying to upgrade its ports, but it’s slow.”

In the US and other developed countries where facilities had sometimes been constructed decades ago, infrastructure was the most outdated, he added.

“In the US ports, there are the unions, handling is often manual and the number of box moves an hour is often low compared with Asia,” Leung said.

“Also inland infrastructure has not been expanded in line with demand growth.”

Hermann Ude, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding, said that, in many emerging countries, investment was patchy.

He argued that with emerging economies forecast to grow two to three times faster than developed countries, infrastructure limitations could seriously hamper competitiveness in the long-term.

“Infrastructure bottlenecks or sub-standard transport facilities can force logistics companies such as DHL to use sub-optimal routes to guarantee delivery, and this increases costs,” he added.

“For example, insufficient port capacity can lead to 15-30% higher sea transport rates on otherwise comparable routes, and these costs come with additional carbon emissions.”

However, strategic investments in key areas, preferably made with private funding and in discussion with shippers and other users, could reduce logistics costs by 6% by 2020, said Ude.

Infrastructure that was privately run tended to focus on creating value, “while governments sometimes have other reasons for investment”, he added.