How Temu and Shein Are Changing Freight Flows Between China and France
Introduction
Two Chinese e-commerce sites have changed the shipping routes between China and Europe in a way that decades of trade talks could not. Temu and Shein are two of the most aggressively priced, algorithmically driven shopping sites in history. They have sent so many items to France that customs can’t keep up, air freight is at capacity, and European regulators have had to take immediate action.
France is currently at the center of this disturbance. The number of tiny items sent to France from digital platforms quadrupled every year, reaching 800 million in 2024. About 90% of these packages came from China. That isn’t just a little bit of development; it’s a big change in how goods get from Chinese factories to French homes. And now that American tariffs are sending more Chinese goods to Europe instead of the US, France is under even more pressure.
This article looks at how Temu and Shein built their logistics models, what it has meant for air and ocean freight between China and France, how policymakers are responding, and what logistics providers and sellers need to know to work well in this new environment.
The Scale of the Shift: Freight Data Between China and France
The stats are mind-blowing. In 2024, almost 4.6 billion low-value packages came to the European Union. That’s around 12 million every day, which is twice as many as the year before. The EU thinks that 91% of those came from China. France, which is one of the EU’s biggest consumer markets and a significant air cargo hub, took in more than its fair part of this tonnage.
These numbers exclusively include tracked e-commerce shipments. French customs officials have admitted that they can’t inspect nearly as many packages as they should be able to. In 2024, the EU itself admitted that just 0.0082% of low-value packages entering Europe were inspected—about 82 pieces for every million that were released into circulation. Because to the mechanics of the parcel surge, it is no longer possible to fully oversee the old system.
Table 1: Growth of Small Parcel Imports to France from Digital Platforms
| Year | Total Parcels to France | Share from China | YoY Growth |
| 2022 | ~200 million | ~60% | — |
| 2023 | ~400 million | ~80% | +100% |
| 2024 | 800 million | ~90% | +100% |
| 2025 (proj.) | 1+ billion | ~90%+ | >25% est. |
Sources: Fortune Europe (April 2025), EU Commission estimations, Courthouse News (December 2025), and industry forecasts.
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport has become the main hub for Chinese e-commerce that is going to France. Five years ago, sorting centers there couldn’t manage the amount of parcels they do now. The infrastructure built for regular freight is being put to the strain by this new wave of lightweight, personally addressed packages. The French postal and customs systems were not built to handle the record-breaking amounts of cargo that CDG air cargo facilities have seen on busy shopping days, notably during Chinese sales occasions like Singles Day.
The Business Models Driving the Freight Surge
You need to know why Shein and Temu ship the way they do before you can grasp how logistics is changing. Their freight strategies are not just random; they are the operational embodiment of two very different but equally disruptive business models.
Shein was the first company to make what the fashion world today terms “ultra-fast fashion.” Shein’s tools use algorithmic analysis of social media behavior and trend data to find new fashion trends and turn them into small-batch production orders in only a few days. A well coordinated network of suppliers in Guangdong province makes the items, which are then transported directly to buyers all over the world by air freight from warehouses near Guangzhou. The business is based on having very no inventory risk: make tiny batches, test demand, then reorder the best ones. Because of this architecture, Shein can’t simply store products in France or anywhere else in Europe ahead of time. This is because the value of the company lies in how quickly it can respond to trend signals, not in how well it can store inventories.
Temu works in a distinct way. Temu is a marketplace platform operated by PDD Holdings. It connects Chinese manufacturers and sellers directly to customers around the world at costs that have astonished Western shops. At first, Temu, like Shein, mostly relied on direct air freight supplies from China. But since 2024, Temu has been aggressively changing its logistics strategy. It has been extending its Local Seller Program, which will be available in France and Italy by the middle of 2025, and building up its European warehouse infrastructure to cut down on the need for individual cross-border shipments.
This is the most important thing for freight markets to know: both platforms completely skipped the typical retail import paradigm. Temu and Shein, on the other hand, used postal and courier systems in the countries where their goods were going to be delivered to handle their distribution network. This increased the number of customs touchpoints by orders of magnitude and created a whole new category of freight demand.
Table 2: Shein vs. Temu — Logistics Model Comparison
| Feature | Shein | Temu |
| Business Model | Small-batch fast fashion; own coordinated supply chain | Open marketplace connecting Chinese sellers to consumers |
| Primary Shipping Mode | Air freight (direct-to-consumer from China) | Air freight + expanding EU local warehouses |
| EU Warehousing | Limited; model resists pre-stocking inventory | Local-to-Local Program active in France & Italy (2025) |
| Revenue (2024) | ~$38 billion | ~$50 billion (estimate) |
| Response to EU Fee Changes | Absorb costs; some consumer price increases expected | Rapid model pivot; local inventory expansion |
Setlog Supply Chain Analysis (April 2025), Wikipedia, Marketplace Universe (November 2025), and WWD (November 2025) are some of the sources.
Air Freight Capacity: A Market Reshaped
The air cargo market has been the most affected by Temu and Shein’s growth on China-France freight flows right away. Yngve Ruud, Vice President of Air Freight Operations at freight giant Dexion, said that neither Temu nor Shein were important players in the air freight business in 2022. However, by the end of 2023, both had become two of the biggest air freight shippers in the world. The change took less than two years.
Tim Scharwath, the CEO of DHL Global Forwarding, said that in less than two years, Chinese e-commerce sites took up more than 30% of the cargo space on planes leaving Asia. It is thought that these two platforms alone convey the same amount of goods every day as 88 Boeing 777 cargo flights. Basile Ricard, who is in charge of air freight operations for Bolloré Logistics Greater China, said that the growth of Shein and Temu is the largest thing changing air cargo right now, not the Red Sea situation or pandemic disruptions.
Shipping goods between China and France has had very bad effects on other enterprises. The amount of aviation cargo space that was available got much smaller in 2023 and 2024. Compared to 2019, spot rates for air freight have doubled. Having signed long-term carrier contracts at scale, Shein and Temu were able to get capacity at better costs. This left smaller exporters and importers to fight for the remaining space at higher pricing. The Paris–Shanghai and Paris–Guangzhou corridors became among of the busiest air cargo routes in the world at the busiest times of year for online shopping.
International airlines started to add more dedicated China-Europe air freight capacity in response to the lack of space. New chartered freighter routes were added, and freight booking sites saw a big rise in demand for pre-contracted space on routes from China to France. For companies that had previously relied on a spot market for air freight, the event served as a stark warning about over-reliance on uncontracted capacity in a market now dominated by a handful of ultra-high-volume shippers.
The U.S. stopped giving the de minimis exemption in the middle of 2025, which started to move some traffic away from air routes to the U.S. European freight experts said that this had two effects: it freed up some space on trans-Pacific routes, but it also raised fears in France that trade flows that were redirected from America would add to the problem of too many goods on China-to-France lanes.
France’s Policy Response: From De Minimis to Direct Fees
For years, Shein and Temu took advantage of a part of EU customs regulation that let packages worth less than €150 enter without paying import fees. This de minimis exception was first meant for travelers bringing back tiny personal items, not for billion-dollar platforms that send out hundreds of millions of packages every year. The loophole gave European retailers an unfair advantage: they had to pay customs of 15% to 32% of the value of the items they imported from China, but Shein and Temu’s direct-to-consumer shipments came in duty-free.
France became the most ardent supporter of reducing this gap. In April 2025, French Budget Minister Amélie de Montchalin went to a parcel sorting center near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to announce plans to charge immediate handling fees on small packages. She said that the current system was letting platforms avoid the security and product safety checks that French and European law required. Éric Lombard, the French Finance Minister, talked about worries about unfair competition against French enterprises and a lot of people not following EU safety rules.
The regulatory response sped up quickly through 2025, and in November, EU finance ministers agreed to get rid of the €150 exemption completely, two years ahead of the original 2028 deadline. They also officially approved a €3 flat-rate customs charge on all low-value packages starting in December 2025. The table below shows the most important steps in this process:
Table 3: France & EU Regulatory Timeline — Small Parcel Import Rules
| Date / Period | Key Regulatory Development |
| Nov 2024 | Temu releases first EU transparency report after Very Large Online Platform designation |
| Apr 2025 | France proposes fixed handling fees on small parcels, calling for action ahead of EU-wide reform |
| Jul 2025 | United States eliminates de minimis exemption for sub-$800 China-origin shipments |
| Nov 6, 2025 | France moves to suspend Shein marketplace over prohibited and dangerous products |
| Nov 13, 2025 | EU Finance Ministers agree to eliminate the €150 customs duty exemption, two years ahead of schedule |
| Dec 12, 2025 | EU formally approves €3 flat customs fee on all sub-€150 parcels from non-EU countries |
| Jul 1, 2026 | €3 flat-rate customs charge takes effect on all low-value parcels entering the EU |
| Late 2026 | EU-wide package handling fee set to follow (France lobbies for ~€5 per parcel) |
Sources: PPC Land (November 2025), SupplyChainBrain (December 2025), WWD (November 2025), and Ecotextile News (December 2025) are all sources.
There is a lot of political support for these moves, which shows that European retailers and legislators are really frustrated. It was determined that almost two-thirds of low-value packages coming into the EU were devalued for customs reasons. This practice costs governments money and makes it almost impossible to accurately assess risk. France’s government said that even a little €2 national tax on small packages might bring in €500 million a year, showing how big the volume is.
France has also directly punished Shein for breaking the law. In November 2025, the French government tried to shut down Shein’s marketplace because it was selling things that were outside the law. When Shein established its first real store in Paris in late 2025, within the renowned BHV department store, there were protests and political disapproval, which made the pressure on lawmakers even stronger. The French response has effectively acted as a model for action across the EU, with France successfully pushing for the entire bloc’s customs reform agenda to be sped up.
The Ocean Freight Dimension: An Emerging Shift
Temu and Shein have mostly used air freight for their direct-to-consumer shipments, but the rules and costs are starting to push both platforms, as well as the whole cross-border e-commerce industry, toward a more complicated, multi-modal approach that includes ocean freight and local European warehousing.
The economics of flying each individual order from Shenzhen to Paris start to fall apart as the de minimis exemption goes away and the cost per parcel goes up. Both platforms are putting money into getting inventory ready in European fulfillment hubs so that last-mile delivery may happen from within the EU instead of from China. This change has big effects on ocean freight lines from China to France. Instead of sending thousands of individual air shipments, items may increasingly transit in bulk ocean containers to European distribution hubs and then be sent domestically. This is the same concept that Amazon and other big-box stores have been using for a long time.
People in the industry have always talked about how well Temu can modify its logistics. When the US raised tariffs, Temu rapidly changed its U.S. app to mostly show off goods stored in American facilities and made big changes to its American supply chain. Analysts believe that Europe will respond in a similar way when the €3 per-parcel tax goes into force in July 2026. Temu will use its operational flexibility to keep costs down and prices low for consumers.
Shein has less options. Its production model—small-batch manufacturing based on real-time trend data—doesn’t work with bulk warehousing since it only makes what is already selling. To keep stock in French warehouses, you have to guess how much demand there will be ahead of time, which goes against the main idea behind Shein’s approach. The company is expected to take on part of the costs per parcel and pass on some of the hikes to customers, accepting lower profit margins instead of changing how it does business.
The bigger picture for the China-France freight corridor is a slow but important change in the mix of modes. Air freight will still be very important for the most time-sensitive and trend-driven categories. However, ocean freight’s proportion of trade between China and France is projected to expand as both e-commerce companies and their suppliers adjust to the new economics of accessing the European market.
The Broader Context: Chinese Exports Surging into Europe
We can’t fully understand the Temu and Shein influence on freight between China and France without looking at other factors. It is part of a larger rise in Chinese exports to Europe, which is being driven by several factors that work together. In 2025, the EU’s trade deficit with China grew to €359.3 billion, up 20% from €304.5 billion in 2024. In the first two months of 2025, Chinese exports to the EU rose by about 28%.
One big reason for this speedup is that Chinese goods are no longer going to the US market, where high tariffs have made it very expensive to export many types of items. Imports from China have dropped by 11% in the United States, which is the only major country to do so. European markets have taken in the extra goods. France is in the way of this trade diversion since it is an important logistical hub with Charles de Gaulle as a major air cargo hub and Le Havre and Marseille as important ocean freight ports.
Informal warehouse networks have arisen alongside the official logistical activities of Temu and Shein, adding another layer to the situation. As the demand for Chinese e-commerce in Europe grew too large for the available official warehouse space, members of the Chinese diaspora in France and other European nations began turning their homes and outbuildings into informal fulfillment centers. In June 2025, reports said that on one day alone, more than 300 postings looking for family warehouse workers appeared on the Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu. Workers might make up to €4,500 a month sorting, labeling, and delivering packages for about €1.16 each. This informal logistics layer shows how much demand has exceeded existing infrastructure.
Navigating the New Freight Landscape with the Right Logistics Partner
The changes talked about in this article are not just policy arguments for brands, manufacturers, and e-commerce sellers who work in the China-France freight corridor. They are real problems that need to be solved right away. Getting rid of EU de minimis standards, changing air cargo capacity, the growth of local warehousing, and new customs compliance criteria all require logistics knowledge that goes beyond just booking a shipment.
This is exactly the kind of situation where experienced cross-border logistics professionals show how valuable they are. Topway Shipping, which is based in Shenzhen, China, has been a professional provider of logistics solutions for cross-border e-commerce since 2010. The people who started the company have more than 15 years of direct expertise in international logistics and customs clearing. They know a lot about how to move goods from one place to another, store them overseas, pass customs, and deliver them final mile.
As freight between China and Europe changes due to new rules, changes in capacity, and the strategic moves of platforms like Temu and Shein, Topway Shipping offers both FCL (full container load) and LCL (less-than-container-load) ocean freight services from China to major ports around the world, including important French ports. Topway’s flexible service architecture gives businesses the infrastructure and know-how to make the switch from air-heavy shipments to cost-effective ocean freight or pre-position inventory in European fulfillment centers before the 2026 fee changes.
Changes to the rules that will happen in 2026 will bring both problems and chances. As the market levels out, sellers that make changes early—such as developing compliant import structures, looking into ocean freight for commodities that aren’t time-sensitive, and working with logistics companies that know European customs rules—will be better able to compete. Topway Shipping is a suitable partner for firms who need to change their logistics strategy from China to France because of the new climate. This is because Topway Shipping has a lot of experience with customs clearance and European shipping lanes.
Conclusion
More than any trade deal or policy reform in recent memory, Temu and Shein have changed how commodities flow between China and France. They made the air freight corridor between China and France one of the busiest in the world, broke postal infrastructure that was meant to handle normal amounts of mail, revealed a major weakness in Europe’s de minimis customs system, and forced regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to take emergency action.
The response from regulators is changing the economics of e-commerce across borders. The EU’s €3 flat-rate customs cost will start on July 1, 2026, and a larger handling fee is expected to come later in the year. This means that France will no longer be able to import micro-parcels without paying any taxes. Temu and Shein will change. Both have shown that they can be flexible in their operations, which regulators always underestimate. But the change will mean more shipping by sea, more storage space in China, and a more complicated multi-modal logistics system for the China-to-France route.
The message for businesses in this field is clear: this market will keep changing quickly. You need to know about the dynamics that are changing it, like Chinese e-commerce platform plans, EU customs enforcement, and global trade diversion. This is the basic knowledge you need to make smart logistical choices. The correct alliances, modal strategies, and logistics providers with real experience in customs clearance, ocean freight, and European distribution will be key to success.
FAQs
Q: Why has France become such a focal point for Temu and Shein’s European logistics?
A: France is one of the EU’s biggest marketplaces for goods and services. It is also home to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, which is a major air cargo hub and the main way for Chinese e-commerce packages to get to Europe. Because of its large market, good logistics, and strong regulatory posture, it has become both a vital operational hub and the political core of Europe’s response to the spike in Chinese parcels.
Q: What exactly is the EU de minimis rule, and why does ending it matter for freight flows?
A: The EU de minimis rule let packages worth less than €150 come in without paying customs fees. Shein and Temu took advantage of this on a huge scale by sending millions of individual orders straight from Chinese factories. Removing it in July 2026 and adding a €3 flat customs tax to every low-value package will impact the cost of shipping things by air and speed up the move to bulk ocean freight and pre-positioned European warehouse inventory.
Q: Will U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods make the freight situation in France worse?
A: Yes, it may be. The U.S. has put high tariffs on all Chinese imports and gotten rid of its own de minimis exemption. This means that Chinese exporters now have a far smaller market in the U.S. Some of the redirected export volume is going to Europe, which makes the logistics and customs situation in France even worse. Eric Lombard, the French Minister of Finance, openly confirmed these worries about trade diversion. He stressed that France’s policy reaction is meant to defend consumers and businesses in France, no matter what the US decides to do.
Q: How should sellers shipping from China to France adapt to the 2026 regulatory changes?
A: The key priorities are: building customs-compliant import structures ahead of the July 2026 fee implementation; evaluating whether ocean freight with European pre-positioning offers better unit economics than direct air shipment; ensuring product safety compliance with EU standards to avoid marketplace suspension risks; and partnering with experienced logistics providers who have established customs clearance expertise and flexible modal capabilities for the China-to-Europe corridor.
Q: Is ocean freight from China to France a viable logistics strategy for e-commerce?
A: Ocean freight is becoming more appealing for sellers who are prepared to pre-position inventory in European fulfillment centers and for product categories that don’t need to be delivered right away. This is because the pricing difference between ocean freight and air freight is getting bigger under new per-parcel charge systems. FCL and LCL ocean freight from major Chinese ports to Le Havre or Marseille, along with local distribution from European warehouses, can provide both low costs and fast delivery times in the US. This makes it a serious strategic option for sellers who are changing their logistics models for the post-de-minimis era.
