Global package delivery firm DHL will discontinue its money-losing domestic operations as of Jan. 30 to concentrate on international service including deliveries to and from the U.S.

The move will eliminate 9,500 American jobs.

DHL said it was too early to say how many jobs in Hawai'i would be affected, but the restructuring represents somewhat of a historic change for a company established in 1969, shipping documents by airplane to Honolulu from San Francisco.

Much of the reduction will involve closing all of DHL's U.S. ground hubs, and trimming the number of stations from 412 to 103.

A DHL spokesman at the company's U.S. headquarters in Plantation, Fla., said decisions on which domestic locations will be closed will be made in the "coming weeks." DHL officials in Florida and Hawai'i also said they could not disclose how many people the company employs in Hawai'i.

DHL said it will maintain significant U.S. operations with 3,000 to 4,000 domestic employees, given that half the company's global shipments touch the U.S. DHL also said it will maintain the same pickup and delivery service in the U.S. for international shipments.

"We are here to stay," John Mullen, global chief executive officer of DHL Express, said in a statement.

The move, however, cedes DHL's domestic business to rivals such as UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service.

Just five years ago, DHL became the third-largest express delivery service company in the United States when it bought the ground delivery business of Seattle-based Airborne Express for $1 billion. As part of that transaction, about 80 DHL workers in Hawai'i were laid off.

DHL's deal with Airborne came a year after the German company, Deutsche Post, Europe's biggest postal service, bought DHL.

DHL had been struggling financially with the domestic operation, which had not posted a profit since the Airborne acquisition. In May, DHL announced a tentative deal with UPS to handle air shipments within the U.S. Yesterday, DHL said it is still interested in working with UPS, but that the worsening U.S. economy led to the more drastic restructuring.

"This is the right move for our U.S. Express operations given the current economic climate and for the long run," Mullen said in the statement. "When we looked for efficiencies in the U.S. Express market, we decided to focus on what we do best as a company, and that's international shipping."

Bloomberg News reports that DHL Express ranks fourth in U.S. express deliveries with 5 percent of the market, according to statistics from SJ Consulting Group. UPS leads with 51 percent, followed by FedEx with 31 percent and the U.S. Postal Service at 13 percent.

DHL said exiting U.S. domestic service will reduce annual operating costs from $5.4 billion to less than $1 billion.

The 9,500 job cuts are on top of about 5,400 positions already eliminated since the beginning of the year as part of an earlier restructuring plan.

DHL estimated that the additional restructuring will cost $1.9 billion, bringing its total restructuring cost to $3.9 billion over two years.

Following the cutbacks, DHL will still employ close to 300,000 people, and serve about 220 countries.

DHL said the restructuring won't affect services offered by other DHL divisions in the U.S. such as Global Forwarding/ Freight, Supply Chain/Customer Information Services and Global Mail, which collectively employ almost 27,000 people.