IN BRIEF: New Services and Solutions

IN BRIEF: New Services and Solutions

From new e-commerce solutions to RFID tags for tracking assets, here’s what’s new and notable in the supply chain.

Products

  • MacGregor introduced an electric transloading crane for the efficient handling of bulk material. The heavy-duty TCE transloading crane features an energy storage system to leverage regenerated power and consumes approximately 60% less energy, compared to a hydraulic drive system.
  • The new Universal Terminal expands 6 River Systems’ (6RS) fulfillment solution by incorporating packout and sortation workflows into a single device. It features a touchscreen with 6RS’ common user interface, which allows managers to move associates between workflows with minimal cross-training and increase the flexibility of the existing workforce.
  • CorShield resealable and static shielding bubble bags from Cortec combine corrosion inhibitors with cushioning packing bubbles to safely transport sensitive components that require mechanical and corrosion protection. The air-filled bubbles can withstand high pressure and abuse and have air retention properties.
  • Industrial facilities can reduce energy costs approximately 65% with Emerson’s Appleton Baymaster LED High-Bay luminaires, which feature a Quick-Mount pendant system for easy installation by one electrician using standard tools. The industrial LED is rated for 84,000 hours.
  • IoT company Confidex released a new family of RFID tags for tracking assets in high-memory applications. The Impinj M780 RAIN RFID tags offer extended memory for encoding information and form factor flexibility for automotive companies.

Services

  • Dayton Freight Lines, a provider of regional less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services, relocated their Gallipolis location to a new facility in Bidwell, Ohio, to increase capacity and improve service to shippers in southeast Ohio.
  • Arvato Supply Chain Solutions opened its first warehouse in Australia. The new site in Villawood, in the Greater Sydney area, has a capacity of more than 3,000 pallet spaces and provides warehousing, order picking and transportation management, direct distribution to retailers and end users, processing for customs clearance and trade compliance, bundling, and other value-added services.
  • Averitt Express opened a new distribution and fulfillment facility in the Memphis area, close to the Memphis International Airport as well as the Memphis area railyard. Featuring 260,000 square feet of enclosed space to handle domestic and international freight, the facility enables Averitt to streamline its customers’ supply chain needs throughout the Central and Southeast United States.
  • The Georgia Ports Authority will remodel the docks at Ocean Terminal in Savannah to handle two large container ships simultaneously. Starting in January 2023, work began to transition the 200-acre facility to a container-only operation.
  • U.S. Pallet Racks launched in the Houston area as a stocking distributor for Nucor Warehouse Systems, providing pallet racks and other materials handling equipment. U.S. Pallet Racks primarily distributes pallet racks manufactured in the United States by Nucor Warehouse Systems, with more than one million pounds of rack available and in stock for shipping. It also offers structural cantilever rack, wire deck, pallet supports, rack protection, and guarding.
  • Interstate Warehousing, a public refrigerated warehouse company, started construction on its new facility on a 92-acre site in Kingman, Arizona. The first phase will be a 273,000-square-foot freezer facility with a 55-foot clear ceiling. With more than 30,000 pallet positions, the facility will feature turret trucks running in very narrow aisles in order to maximize storage space. Master site planning is in place for future expansion up to 1.2 million square feet.
  • Performance Team is opening a new cold storage facility in Wilmington, North Carolina, in Q3 2023 to serve imports and exports. The facility targets the refrigerated market of poultry, pork, bananas, potatoes, and seafood, and is located close to 27 refrigerated commodity production sites within 80 miles and can reach 225 million consumers within a 1-2 day transit.
  • LTL services provider FedEx Freight, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp., expanded its FedEx Freight Direct e-commerce solution for returns of big and bulky items (such as outdoor patio furniture, grills, and exercise equipment) from or through-the-door of residences and businesses. FedEx Freight Direct now covers nearly 100% of the U.S. population for basic pickup and basic by appointment pickup and 90% of the contiguous U.S. population for standard pickup.
  • Ryder System unveiled a new drop-and-hook trailer service, which leverages available capacity through COOP by Ryder, the company’s peer-to-peer truck- and trailer-sharing platform. Shippers can find a solution for sourcing a fleet of dry or refrigerated trailers, leveraging both Ryder’s freight brokerage team and a pool of underutilized trailers available through COOP and Ryder’s network of 45,000 carriers.

Technology

  • AutoStore launched the PickUpPort, a public-facing port that lets consumers shop online and pick up their order directly from the AutoStore System. With the new solution, retailers can offer a hassle-free pick-up option in-store. When a customer places an order and chooses in-store pickup, a controller function directs an AutoStore robot to pick the bins that contain the products.
  • The RoxX forklift series from HUBTEX combines a high load capacity with a compact design. The industrial truck is up to 25% narrower and around 20% shorter than classic forklift trucks. It features a new single-wheel steering system, which reduces the turning radius, letting the forklift handle heavy loads in tight spaces.
  • Locus, a technology company providing last-mile logistics solutions, launched Delivery Linked Checkout (DLC), an integrated capability designed to help retailers deliver orders on customer-preferred timelines. Part of the Dispatch Management Platform, DLC offers available slots upon checkout for end consumers—accounting for available capacity, logistics costs, and business constraints, so retailers can satisfy customer expectations while maintaining profitability.
  • Fleet Enable introduced an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that loads final-mile delivery trucks to eliminate shipment failures. The software, called Capacity Optimization, calculates cargo size and truck capacity, then dictates how orders are stowed in vehicles to ensure that final-mile orders are on time and underweight.
  • Freightflow, a transportation management system that leverages AI and simplifies day-to-day supply chain operations in the perishable goods industry, launched its new version 2.5. New features allow customers to automate and edit more elements of the load management process with real-time tracking data and analytics.
  • Hellmann Smart QR, a passive dynamic QR data tracker launched by Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and startup Logmore, enables visibility along the entire supply chain for sensitive cargo such as perishable goods and pharmaceuticals. It measures temperature, humidity, light, and shocks, generating a new QR code with each measurement and associating each deviation with a specific point in the cargo’s journey. The information can be downloaded via cell phone camera upon cargo arrival.
  • Fulfillment platform Flowspace released updates to its OmniFlow suite of tools for e-commerce merchants, including real-time order tracking across delivery stages, a centralized order and inventory visibility dashboard, and open, API-based connectivity.
  • Pharmacy chains and retailers, such as symptom relief brands and illness remedy makers, can now leverage an artificial intelligence-driven Custom Demand Forecast tool from Kinsa Insights, an illness insights solutions company that predicts cough, cold, and flu outbreaks up to 20 weeks in advance. The new forecast uses machine learning to predict sales down to the store trading area by combining historical and real-time illness data from a network of smart thermometers across the country with category sales data from retailers.
  • ORBCOMM, a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, now offers an end-to-end monitoring technology for dry marine containers. ORBCOMM’s solution allows shippers and operators to track the location and status of their containers at every point in the asset’s journey, with both real-time and historical reporting.
  • Rail shippers can now eliminate manual translation of their shipment tendering information into rail-specific terminology with eBills of Lading (eBOL), a capability added to TransmetriQ’s Rail Management System (RMS). Railinc’s TransmetriQ unit added the feature to speed Bill of Lading creation. TransmetriQ has implemented eBOL with seven Class I railroads to date and will add this capability for any current RMS user—shipping via any North American railroad—on request.

Transportation

  • Sweden’s Stockholm Norvik Port added two new ocean cargo connections with the recent launch of SUN Line Shipping’s Rotterdam-Stockholm-Hull container service route. The container ship Perseus operates the route and has a 660-TEU cargo capacity, sailing to and from Stockholm Norvik Port one day each week.
  • Lufthansa Cargo added Hanoi, Vietnam, as a new destination to its global Boeing 777F route network which has a direct connection to its Frankfurt hub. With the addition of Hanoi, the cargo airline now has a total of four weekly freighter flights to and from Vietnam, with a cargo capacity of 250 tons per week. All freighter services to Vietnam are operated by AeroLogic with B777F aircraft.
  • Korean airline Air Premia launched a cargo service linking Narita, Japan, with Incheon, South Korea, and from there on to Singapore, Saigon, and Los Angeles, respectively. Air Premia is represented by ECS Group subsidiaries in Korea and the United States, and now in Japan with the newly founded Globe Air Cargo Japan.
  • OOCL launched East Africa Express (EAX5), which provides express linkage between India, the Middle East, and East Africa. EAX5 offers a transit time of 9 to 14 days from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and Mundra, India, to Mombasa, Kenya.