UPS to deliver more parcels in China

It also set up three regional hubs in Qingdao, Chengdu and Zhengzhou in the past three years, to keep pace with the development in China's coastal, western and central regions, and it offers logistics services to high-tech manufacturers in areas surrounding those cities.

In 2012, UPS posted $54.1 billion in global revenue from its package, supply chain and freight operations. It has 399,000 workers across the world, with 6,170 in China. The company operates 208 weekly flights connecting China to the US, Europe and destinations across Asia.

The carrier is also betting on China's growing demand for healthcare products, and it established a specialist facility in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, in the second half of the year, to handle shipments of medical products.

The new Hangzhou facility has 22,000 square meters of storage space. It's designed to store medical devices, biological products and pharmaceuticals, and to meet the distribution needs of pharmaceutical companies. Merck Sharp and Dohme, the world's second-largest drugmaker, is UPS' first partner in the facility.

Richard Loi, UPS president in China, said that expanding to the healthcare logistics field means the delivery company can now extend its industrial chain from distribution to upgraded warehousing and storage services. It also wishes to have a presence in the bulk freight of healthcare products by offering cheaper solutions for its clients.

The advantage of the new healthcare logistics service is that it comes with a number of related businesses. Delivery companies are able to make profits on ground packages, air packages, freight forwarding and logistics, as the business plays a key role in all of these areas.

"There are a lot of areas that we're looking at and we'll invest in them as time goes on," Loi said.

"Clinical trials are a big area of healthcare and there are not a lot of Chinese companies capable of providing such a high-demand logistics service. Home healthcare delivery can also be considered as a big market-growth point. As people get older, it's going to be easier for them to have the right medicine at home, instead of going to nursing homes," Loi said.

UPS opened its first Asia healthcare facility in Singapore in 2011, and so far it has followed that with the opening of three additional facilities in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Sydney.