"The International Federation of Warehousing Logistics" was established in 1973 and is a non-profit joint organization (non-governmental organization NGO) of the universal warehousing and logistics association as well as warehousing and logistics enterprises. Three names have been used, from 1973-2013 to "The International Federation of Warehousing Associations (IFWA)", from 2013-2019 to "The International Association of Warehousing and Logistics Associations (IFWLA)", and renamed to "The International Federation of Warehousing Logistics" in June 2019 (IFWL) ". The Union Headquarters (Secretariat) had also been changed three times, from 1973-2002 in Paris, France, from 2002-2019 in London, United Kingdom, and moved to Beijing, China since June 2019. The official members of the IFWL (National or regional association) are up to more than 40 units,(including developed countries such as the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and other developing countries such as China, India, Iran, Latvia, Cyprus).
In order to promote the reformation and development of the IFWL, the IFWL ARTICLES has been revised three times in the past 10 years, namely: the plenary meeting of the executive committee of the alliance (13 associations) was held in Beijing in 2013, and the executive committee was held in Beijing in May 2016 Special meeting (warehousing association from China, United States, United Kingdom ), June 2019 Special Meeting in Shanghai (10 members), the main content of the amendment is the IFWL name and main tasks.
According to the new "IFWL ARTICLES ", the purpose and goal of the IFWL is to promote the standardization, informatization and innovative development of the global warehousing and logistics industry, encourage and promote the best practices of the warehousing and logistics industry, and continuously improve the service quality of the global warehousing and logistics industry ,promote the co-construction and sharing of global warehousing resources and business cooperation between warehousing enterprises, warehousing enterprises and cargo owners.
In June 2019, the IFWL Special Meeting reviewed and approved “the IFWL Five-Year Work Plan”, which plans to focus on five tasks: widely invite storage and logistics companies from various countries to participate in the IFWL, survey statistics and release the average warehouse rents of key cities in member countries (regions) as well as vacancy rate, development and operation of "international warehousing e-commerce platform",organization and compilation of global unified warehouse grades, warehousing service quality standards, and international certification of warehouse and warehousing services, introduction of WERC's "Warehousing and Distribution Evaluation and Best Practices Guide" ,promote warehousing and distribution companies in various countries to improve operational performance.