Category Archives: Technology

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) adds a new ‘quote and book’ function to IATA Net rates and IAG Cargo, the cargo division of International Airlines Group (IAG), becomes the first carrier to integrate the feature. This will enable airlines to offer freight forwarders dynamic pricing for booking their shipments. “The pandemic has accelerated the appetite for digitalization across the air cargo industry. IATA Net Rates new ‘quote and book’ function simplifies and accelerates the rate distribution and booking process between airlines and freight forwarders, saving valuable time by eliminating manual, labour-intensive processes. We are pleased to expand our Net Rates partnership with IAG Cargo to support their efficient cargo rates distribution and booking capabilities, across the different airlines of the group,” said Frederic Leger, Interim Senior Vice President for Commercial Products and Services, IATA, & President, CNS. The Net Rates platform can be accessed through Net Rates online or integrated with customer systems, accelerating the distribution of rates to market while simplifying and reducing the cost of rate handling procedures.

Freighter operator Pacific Air Cargo has introduced a new airfreight tracking and notification service, PACTRAK. The tracking service is integrated into the company’s website and allows customers to know the status of their shipment at any point in its journey. The system offers shipment update notifications through SMS text messages, emails, or both. Notifications can also be tailored for different milestones during the journey, such as flight departure or arrival. “We are pleased to offer this innovative and state-of-the-art tracking service to our partners,” said Tanja Janfruechte, Chief Executive of Pacific Air Cargo. “We believe that PACTRAK will make shipping with Pacific Air Cargo even more convenient, and we look forward to introducing other enhancements and useful tools in the future.”

In a joint effort to provide care and support to children hailing from COVID-affected families, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, Kempegowda International Airport Foundation (KIAF) and Sparsha Trust have come together to launch Chinnara Dhama, an initiative to provide shelter and education to 300 girl children. ‘Chinnara Dhama’, in Kannada translates to “A Sanctuary for young children” and will be a residential and learning facility within the campus ‘Makkala Dhama’. While KIAF is the CSR arm of Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), Sparsha Trust is a Bengaluru-based NGO that is working towards creating a safe space for vulnerable children by providing them with care, protection, and education. Chinnara Dhama will be managed under KIAF’s flagship programme Namma Shikshana (Our Education). The initiative will provide safe and secure lodging facilities, as well as social and psychological support to girl children. It will provide access to quality education by enrolling the children at one of the BIAL-adopted schools. The children will also be provided with basic and vocational skills that are required to develop their social competencies.

DP World, announced the launch of its new digital logistics platform, CARGOES Logistics. The platform provides customers with a single-window solution enabling seamless, safe, secure, and efficient movement of their cargo. With CARGOES Logistics, customers can choose from multimodal logistics options, ship freight by sea, road, and/or rail, get instant quotes, swift booking confirmation and multiple secure payment options in three simple steps – Search, Choose & Book. It will offer easy and swift cargo booking from origin to destination. The first phase of launch will immediately offer customers access to book cargo from UAE to India as well as India to multiple destinations across the Middle East, Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Far East and North Africa. CARGOES Logistics aims to address complexities and inefficiencies that exist in global supply chains including multiple handovers, inefficient tracking and limited visibility of a shipment across the supply chain. The new digital platform will enhance transparency by providing deep tracking of cargo with real time insights, end to end visibility & predictability, an all-inclusive price with no hidden charges and highly efficient end to end digital experience backed by DP World’s extensive network of integrated logistics assets and best-in-class service levels. It will facilitate ease of doing business, boost reliability & flexibility and provide seamless experience to customers for all their logistics needs.

Underlying its commitment to democratizing e-commerce for sellers and enabling D2C brands to scale, Shiprocket’s Engage is a dedicated post-purchase order processing platform built to allow sellers to scale their e-commerce business through automated workflows and AI-based order analysis for risk scoring. Shiprocket Engage provides a robust customer experience that minimizes the RTO (Return To Origin) rate efficiently and increases profitability for online sellers. Shiprocket Engage powers the entire post-purchase journey over WhatsApp, enabling sellers to confirm orders, verify and correct addresses, increase prepaid orders, send tracking notifications, and manage NDR flows to collect delivery re-attempt preferences from customers automatically. This leads to sellers’ reduced inbound (tracking-related) and outbound calls (NDR – rescheduling deliveries). Engage automates most of the post-purchase workflows resulting in optimizing the usage of human resources/manual processes.

Brussels Airport Company and skeyes signed an agreement where Brussels Airport will become a 50 percent shareholder in SkeyDrone, a subsidiary of skeyes. SkeyDrone offers a range of services that enable safe and efficient drone operations. With this acquisition, Brussels Airport intends to play an active role in the drone technology developments and in the provision of drone services to various industries in Belgium and abroad. Over the past year, Brussels Airport has worked closely with skeyes and SkeyDrone on various drone projects in fields such as intrusion detection, aerodrome safety, operational efficiency, etc. “Brussels Airport’s investment in SkeyDrone is strategic and goes beyond investing in drone know-how and technology. It is an investment in co-creating the future of unmanned air traffic together with 2 key players in this field, skeyes and SkeyDrone. With SkeyDrone, we can fully explore, develop and commercialise drone management systems and drone services that can be used on a daily basis by clients in various industries,” says Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport Company.

After 21 months of construction, the world’s first zero-carbon intelligent container terminal in Tianjin Port was officially put into operation. The terminal is a 200,000-ton container terminal with a designed annual throughput of 2.5 million TEUs. The terminal adopts an intelligent horizontal transportation system that connects its key facilities to realize real-time information interaction of all production factors. The artificial intelligence robots of transportation here are equipped with various sensors to be their “eyes and ears”. Therefore, compared with traditional container terminals, the intelligent terminal in Tianjin can save manpower, time and cost, while maintaining a world-leading efficiency. The terminal is operated all by wind and photovoltaic power, achieving zero-carbon emission in energy consumption and production.

o9 Solutions Inc., an AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, reported a 97% increase in Q3 2021 bookings, which translates into an almost three-fold increase in year-to-date bookings compared to the same period in 2020. These results show o9’s continued strong growth momentum. Upsells to existing customers drove 20% of the bookings activity year-to-date at o9. This included clients that expanded their initial purchase multiple times within the year, reinforcing the rapid value proposition delivered by o9’s platform. EMEA and APAC were strong contributors to bookings in Q3, signaling o9’s growing market share within these regions. New customer bookings in Q3 2021 were well diversified across a range of enterprise sizes and o9’s core verticals with significant strength in manufacturing. During the quarter, the company had successful deployments in new industry verticals, including one of the largest global telecom companies and a large global pharmaceutical company. There were new deployments at one of the largest beverage companies in the world, where o9 is replacing a global legacy planning solution. Overall, the quarter saw customer deployments across demand, supply chain, integrated business planning, and commercial planning – reaffirming the flexibility of the platform to deliver value for a variety of planning and decision-making use cases across the enterprise.

Pluss Advanced Technologies (PLUSS) has received support SAMRIDH, a healthcare blended financing facility, to increase manufacturing capacity of its ‘temperature-controlled’ shipping containers for pharmaceuticals. PLUSS makes these containers from ‘phase change materials’ using the concept of thermal energy storage, to maintain inside-temperature without electricity at desired levels for up to 120 hours. The containers, called Celsure, are used in transport and storage of temperature sensitive pharma products, including vaccines. Through an innovative financing model, SAMRIDH leveraged philanthropic funds to help PLUSS raise commercial capital needed for the expansion of its business operations. SAMRIDH is supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by IPE Global. PLUSS provides Celsure containers that maintain precise temperature between 2 and 8°C, 15 and 25°C and -20°C, for up to five days. These solutions bring operational and cost efficiency in transport of temperature sensitive products. They are used by pharma, diagnostics and biotech companies to pack and transport temperature sensitive drugs, vaccines, test kits, clinical trial samples and other products that require a constant temperature to maintain their efficacy. With support from SAMRIDH, PLUSS will double the manufacturing capacity of Celsure boxes to 6,000 boxes per month and set up a conditioning facility in Hyderabad. This will assist pharma and biotech companies in making timely deliveries of covid-19 test kits, drugs and vaccines to remote areas where it is a considerable challenge to maintain the right cold-chain.

Volocopter’s electric heavy-lift drone VoloDrone conducted its first public flight at ITS World Congress 2021. Together with the international logistics leader DB Schenker, Volocopter, the pioneer of urban air mobility (UAM), demonstrated VoloDrone’s seamless integration into the logistics supply chain with an end-to-end cargo transport demonstration. The partners showed their significant progress together since DB Schenker became a strategic investor of Volocopter in early 2020. The 3-minute test flight took off at 3:02 p.m. at homePORT Hamburg and reached a maximum altitude of 22 meters. For this delivery simulation, the electric heavy-lift utility drone was equipped with a load-box in between its landing gear. First, the demonstration teams secured a Euro-pallet sized load to the box under the VoloDrone, followed by a smooth take-off. After this, the aircraft brought the payload to a DB Schenker Cargo Bike and landed safely. Once the payload was transferred successfully, the Cargo Bike delivered its cargo to the final destination under the area’s park deck, marking the completion of the entirely electric, multimodal last-mile delivery. “This first public VoloDrone flight is a strong sign for Volocopter´s leading position in the UAM industry. We are the only UAM company offering solutions for passengers and goods that are flying fully scaled and publicly around the world,” says Florian Reuter, Volocopter CEO. “Our VoloDrone will make existing logistics processes more robust, efficient, and sustainable. DB Schenker is an invaluable partner in our endeavor to untap the massive potential of our VoloDrone’s logistics use cases.”