o9 Solutions, announced its collaboration with Vestas, a world leader in wind technology, to develop its global supply chain planning capabilities by leveraging the o9 Digital Brain platform. Vestas is the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions and an innovator in wind energy design, manufacturing, and installation. The company services wind turbines in 83 countries across the globe. With the demand for renewable energy sources increasing worldwide, Vestas decided to digitally transform its supply chain with the aim of supporting its global growth and its ability to better navigate disruptions. Vestas selected o9 Solutions to meet these goals. With o9, Vestas will improve its demand planning and review, supply chain visibility, global and regional Sales & Operations Planning / Sales & Operations Execution. The o9 Digital Brain platform was selected by Vestas due to its ability to leverage modern technology – including the digital twin of the supply chain, big data, AI / ML algorithms, knowledge graphs and the like – to help companies achieve new levels of productivity, speed, and expertise in planning and decision-making. Additionally, o9’s experience in the wind turbine industry played a pivotal role in Vestas’ decision.

A UPS 747 flight is now connecting India directly to Europe and connecting UPS customers to North and Latin American markets five days per week. That doubles the company’s previous capacity to and from India for small and medium-sized business customers looking to grow their revenue base. UPS’s first direct flight from India will connect Delhi to its largest international hub at Cologne, Germany. Customers have been diversifying their supply chains as they respond to pandemic disruptions. And cargo space in the belly of passenger aircraft – normally reliable and cost-effective – has been significantly reduced. Now, buoyed by market demand and with an eye on business continuity, Indian entrepreneurs are looking for reliable alternatives to import and export products. “When business demand is increasing and volumes globally are being challenged, what you need is a smart logistics network that can respond to what customers are asking for, in an altered business environment. The agility to connect major economies to India via a direct flight for exports and imports is an example of UPS’s better not bigger strategy and will provide reliability and expanded capacity to UPS’s customers,” said Rachid Fergati, Managing Director Middle East, Central Asia, and Indian subcontinent for UPS.

The transnational project “South Baltic Transport Loops” (SBTL), supported by the European Union and initially developed by Hamburg Port Consulting (HPC) recently held its closing conference in Copenhagen. Aimed at assisting in the development of smaller and medium-sized ports in the region, a number of significant new sea connections have resulted. The main focus of the partners in the project, the ports of Elblag, Karlshamn, Mukran and Roenne, and the Klaipeda Shipping Research Centre is developing and implementing new regular services and ship connections for container, bulk and general cargo transport, and ferry services. Attention is also being placed on improving the intermodal hinterland connections of the ports. Representatives of the project partners presented their results at the closing conference in Copenhagen on 28 September. HPC developed the project in 2016, applied for funding and has been coordinating it since 2018. Dr Olaf Zeike, Senior Consultant at HPC and the project manager in charge, takes positive stock: “With the activities promoted by the SBTL project, the course has been set for sustainable development of the partner ports in the southern Baltic Sea region. Despite Corona-related delays, we can be proud of the team effort that has been achieved across the countries involved in the project.” The list of innovations and improvements is impressive

GEODIS announced the deployment of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) from Geek+, a global technology company specialized in smart logistics through advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), at its Yuen Long Warehouse Distribution Centre (YLDC) in Hong Kong, SAR China. The YLDC will be provided with an exclusive AMR operating area with QR coding to guide automated operations. The smart facility underlines GEODIS’ digital-first outlook to future operations. Onno Boots, Regional President & CEO, Asia Pacific said: “Our investments in this AI-driven automation system brings substantial value to GEODIS’ eCommerce and retail customers by addressing some of the key challenges they face today. These solutions not only bring long-term cost-savings, operational efficiencies, and safety, but also enable us to maintain high-quality control standards while providing customers greater speed and flexibility of movement of goods.”

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released September 2021 data for global air cargo markets showing that demand continued to be well above pre-crisis levels and that capacity constraints persist. As comparisons between 2021 and 2020 monthly results are distorted by the extraordinary impact of COVID-19, unless otherwise noted, all comparisons below are to September 2019 which followed a normal demand pattern. • Global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs*), was up 9.1% compared to September 2019 (9.4% for international operations). • Capacity remains constrained at 8.9% below pre-COVID-19 levels (September 2019) (-12% for international operations). “Air cargo demand grew 9.1% in September compared to pre-COVID levels. There is a benefit from supply chain congestion as manufacturers turn to air transport for speed. But severe capacity constraints continue to limit the ability of air cargo to absorb extra demand. If not addressed, bottlenecks in the supply chain will slow the economic recovery from COVID-19. Governments must act to relieve pressure on global supply chains and improve their overall resilience,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

CEVA Logistics has further cemented its role as a leading player in the Southeast Asia wine and spirits sector after winning a three-year contract with Diageo to handle warehousing and value-added services in the Philippines. Diageo is one of the world’s largest alcoholic beverage producers, and the new deal builds on an existing relationship between the companies over the last two years with CEVA responsible for handling Diageo’s air and ocean import brokerage requirements. The contract further positions CEVA Logistics as the only 3PL serving the Top 3 global wine and spirits companies with transport and warehousing services in the Philippines. Under the terms of the contract, Diageo will become one of the first clients at the soon-to-be-completed CEVA Logistics Ruhale Taguig warehouse in southeast Manila. CEVA will manage full distribution center operations for Diageo’s range of products, including a temperature-controlled section for domestic distribution throughout the Philippines. CEVA will also provide tax stamping and labelling of more than four million bottles each year. With its extensive experience of operating with leading players across the beverage industry, CEVA will deliver full transparency to the customer to enable improved monitoring of the entire operation through its warehouse management software which will be integrated with Diageo’s enterprise resource planning platform.

The government is set to allow concession in royalty or revenue share payable by private firms handling transhipment and coastal containers at their facilities in Centre-owned major ports, in a policy boost to promote container transhipment and coastal shipping in the country. The relaxation in payment of royalty or revenue share by public-private-partnership (PPP) operators at major ports on transhipment and coastal containers will be made applicable to existing terminals and upcoming projects, an official briefed on the plan said. The move will benefit the international container transhipment terminal run by Dubai’s DP World at Vallarpadam in Cochin Port Trust, the only such exclusive facility built at a major port to handle Indian cargo containers that are routed through Colombo or Singapore. It was developed to cut India’s dependence on regional hubs and help save extra time and costs, but has failed to live up to expectations due to water depth constraints and higher rates on vessel related charges, compared to Colombo.

The Application Programming Interface (API) solution for Air Canada Cargo customers is live now. By being directly integrated with Air Canada Cargo, customers will be able to reduce the amount of time taken to complete a booking or AWB, resulting in improved efficiency. This API solution will improve efficiency for customers by manual interactions such as quoting, booking, scheduling, and track and trace requests. It will also improve connectivity and collaboration, as well as the overall customer experience by connecting different systems and processes to offer an enhanced booking flow. “We are thrilled to implement this important technology for Air Canada Cargo and are excited about the role it will play in advancing the industry toward the digitization of processes, and indeed our business as a whole. This will be beneficial for Air Canada Cargo’s valued customers who will be able to take advantage of the many benefits this API will provide,” said Matthieu Casey, senior director, Global Sales and Revenue Optimization.

Turkish Airlines’ brand, Turkish Cargo, recently added Macau to the list, strengthening its flight network. After Hong Kong, Macau, one of the economic centers of China, will be among its destinations served with direct cargo flights. The number of direct cargo flights has reached 97 including Macau starting today on November 1, 2021. Located in the Guangdong province of China; Macau is an important center in terms of tourism and finance and hosts market leaders of sectors such as high technology, e-commerce, electronics and textiles. Turkish Cargo aims to strengthen the air cargo bridge it has established between Europe and the Far East with the reliable, fast and direct air transportation it offers to logistics service providers with Airbus A330F type wide-body cargo aircraft on ISL-ALA-MFM-ALA-ISL (Istanbul Ataturk Airport, Almaty International Airport, Macau International Airport, Almaty International Airport, Istanbul Ataturk Airport) route.

Union Coal and Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi has emphasized on full utilisation of the port facilities at Paradip Port Trust in Odisha to increase coal transportation through the sea route. During his visit to the port today, he asked the officials to explore possibilities of using Paradip port as a coal hub. The Union Minister Joshi alongwith the Minister of State for Coal and Mines Raosaheb Patil Danve also visited the Hingula area under Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and reviewed various activities and projects. Joshi also visited the site of Rail Receival System near Paradip port wherein coal is unloaded with the help of wagon-tipplers. The minister said that this system of unloading is efficient, helps in saving time and demurrage charges, while also reducing the spread of coal dust.