Category Archives: Supply Chain

In a webinar on ATA & UN TIR Carnet with a focus on ‘facilitates free movement of goods across multiple international borders’, Sunil K Mall, Commissioner of Customs, Nhava Sheva, Mumbai, said, “TIR will facilitate intermodal transport and act as enabling document to cross multiple international borders without any additional checks. It will further help to improve trade between India, Central Asia & CIS countries.” While sharing his experience as the first TIR holder in India Shankar Shinde, Chairman-Elect, FFFAI, said, “Customs procedures in India should be further simplified under TIR to benefit large traders and exporters in India.” Raphael Hirt, IRU, Geneva, said, “The International Road Transport Union was very pleased to acknowledge the interest shown by Indian exporting industry towards the TIR procedure, especially the efforts made by CBIC, FICCI and FFFAI to promote this trade facilitation tool. IRU will continue to support all stakeholders involved in the implementation of TIR and its electronic version – eTIR in India. This will enable trade actors and Customs to benefit fully from the immense advantages provided by the TIR Convention which includes simplification of border crossing procedures, reduction of time and cost for the international movements of goods.” ATA Carnet is a temporary admission document, which simplifies the customs procedures and clearances in a foreign country, without paying duty or a bank guarantee for temporary import into that country. Like a passport for goods, ATA Carnet allows for the goods for which it was issued to enter any of the participating countries for up to one year. An ATA Carnet holder can avoid customs declaration and can do away with security deposit or guarantee in the country of temporary importation. …

Locus has announced a partnership with Vinculum to offer brands & retailers best-in-class routing, omnichannel commerce solutions, and supply chain management under one roof. Locus and Vinculum will together provide a seamless solution for brands to manage everything E-commerce, right from global marketplace listings, data consistency, real-time view of inventory in stores, BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store), BOPAK (buy online, pick up at kerbside), Returns across channels, to last-mile routing. “Locus is continuously increasing its presence in Southeast Asia, Middle East, and India. In these markets, the relevance of E-commerce and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) has skyrocketed in the recent past. Companies are looking for solutions to go online and reach more customers,” said Krishna Khandelwal, Chief Business Officer, Locus. “We work with all parts of the Omnichannel ecosystem including brands, 3pls, marketplaces and retailers. Smart logistics solutions are a problem area for many of our customers. The partnership with Locus will help our customers to be more efficient and enable them to scale faster,” says Venkat Nott, Founder & CEO, Vinculum Group. Locus uses deep machine learning and proprietary algorithms to offer smart logistics solutions to customers. The company presently works with top clients across Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and India. It has offices in the USA, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The top management of the company includes executives from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Barclays Capital, Google, and BlueDart (a DHL company), and data scientists with PhDs from the Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois, among others. Locus has so far raised $29 million from tier-1 investors like Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, Blume Ventures, Exfinity Venture Partners, & growX ventures, among others.

To accelerate growth across Africa’s vast logistics ecosystem, Allcargo is leveraging its global expertise to undertake trans-country movement of big project cargoes in the world’s second-largest continent. Building close collaborations with partners, customers and stakeholders within Africa, the company has exuded a spirit of innovation while tackling complex projects like ODC transportation, water pipelines and power transmission lines. “Allcargo’s global aspirations are driven by its aim to create opportunities, drive partner progress, and lend its expertise to projects across geographies that transform economies and boost growth. It is this futuristic approach that has led the company to create a niche in Africa. Committing to the highest standards of safety and zero compromise on compliance, Allcargo is set to prove its mettle as a trusted logistics partner in helping Africa scale new heights of growth,” said Rahul Rai, Business Head – Projects & Engineering Division, Allcargo Logistics, on the sidelines of the 15th CII – Exim Bank Digital Conclave on India – Africa Project Partnership. With a network of 300 offices across 160 countries and a wholly-owned global subsidiary ECU Worldwide, Allcargo has a presence in most African trade hubs. The company worked on key infrastructure projects across six African countries during the Covid-induced lockdown. In Tanzania, Allcargo handled follow-ups with Government Procurement Services Agency (GPSA) for payment of shipping line charges, exemption regularisation, TAN road permits for oversized project cargo, customs clearance, loading permits, pickup and delivery of shipments for the regional Rusumo Falls hydropower project. In Burundi, Allcargo took care of follow-ups with OBR (Burundais des recettes) for exemption regularisation, clearance through single customs territory and payment of shipping line charges. The company also arranged border clearance and empty …

Shipsy has announced to extend its platform for free of cost to the SMEs/MSMEs in India under its ‘Network Module’. The platform will provide SMEs/MSMEs access to utilities to connect with the verified agents and get access to competitive rates as well as much better service levels due to these vendors being verified by Shipsy. The platform offers a bouquet of services like price procurement, documentations handling and container tracking to improve on-time delivery of goods. Soham Chokshi, Co-Founder & CEO at Shipsy, said, “The MSME/SME segment has perhaps been the hardest hit segment in COVID-19, and the segment is in a desperate need to expand their business by going international. With a vision and aim to scale up Indian MSMEs/SMEs and give a boost to Atmanirbhar Bharat, we have launched ‘Network Module’ for MSMEs/SMEs to help the sector navigate through the challenges of exporting goods and most importantly help them become cost competitive in the global arena by reducing their freight costs. We have on-boarded more than 5000 small enterprises for this. We aim to expand the offering to Pan India and plan to cover more than 20,000 enterprises by the end of this fiscal. Our offering is aligned with ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives and it will enable the sector for long term sustainability, profitability and will address the needs of the SMEs/MSMEs. There are around 36 million SMEs operating in the country, generating 80 million employment opportunities and contributing 8 per cent to India’s GDP. We are currently processing 1.5 million transactions through our platform on daily basis and processes over 10 per cent of India’s total containerised export and import volume.” Last year Shipsy …

In the fifth edition of the Logistics Trend Radar, DHL has revealed 29 key trends that will impact the logistics industry over the next years. The fifth-edition of Logistics Trend Radar indicates that we are experiencing an overall stabilisation of trends from the past four years. However, with the logistics industry weathering the current global pandemic, transformation processes have been accelerated. COVID-19 has driven changes regarding recent logistics innovation, automation, and digital work more rapidly and has accelerated industry digitalisation by years. Conversely, many trends initially perceived as disruptive game-changers for the logistics industry have yet to deliver on their disruptive potential. Self-driving vehicles and drones continue to be held back by legislative and technical challenges as well as limited social acceptance. Logistics marketplaces are stabilising on a few leading platforms and established forwarders are entering the game with their own digital offerings, backed with robust global logistics networks. From cloud computing to collaborative robotics, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, logistics professionals have to make sense of a vast market of novel technology. Modernising all touch points of supply chains, from an elegant digital or customer journey, through fulfillment transport and final mile delivery is the new imperative for long-term success. Those who adopt and scale new technology and up-skill workforces fastest will have a competitive advantage on the market.

In order to deliver an integrated solution to eliminate friction in complex global supply chains, FourKites have partnered with o9 Solutions. The idea is to augment o9’s Control Tower solution with FourKites’ real-time in-transit freight tracking. The partnership enables customers to receive, in o9, proactive notifications of freight disruptions coming from FourKites, so that they can implement agile planning and scenario management to mitigate any impact of those disruptions on their end-to-end supply chain. “o9 Solutions and FourKites are two best-of-breed solutions that are bringing a completely new value proposition to our joint customers. By bringing real-time freight tracking right into our Control Tower, our users will have access to maximum visibility, predictability and reactivity to any freight disruptions,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO, o9 Solutions. “Real-time visibility and predictive ETAs are critical to end-to-end supply chain planning and orchestration,” said Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO, FourKites, in adding, “Our customers are seeing 10-15 per cent savings within their transportation, warehouse and customer service operations by leveraging the prescriptive recommendations from our platform. Our shipper network and data set, combined with o9’s end-to-end integrated planning capabilities, will enable our mutual customers to create exponential savings across their supply chains.”

Kuehne+Nagel open airside pharma and healthcare hubs in Brussels, Belgium and Johannesburg, South Africa. With the opening of airside facilities, the company has added two strategic elements to its global GxP-certified network of temperature-controlled facilities for the distribution of vaccines and other pharma & healthcare products. As many of the temperature-sensitive products have very low to no stability outside of their stated temperature ranges, direct tarmac access at Kuehne+Nagel airside facilities even further minimises the risk of temperature excursions and ensures product integrity during the logistics journey. The new premises have dedicated areas for all ranges of temperature-sensitive products:

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has partnered with Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) in South Africa, a state-owned freight transport and handling company, to develop an integrated online marketplace platform by bringing together cargo owners, shipping lines, clearing and forwarding agents, and road/rail haulers. Both the companies aim to create a platform named Cargo Connect, which will function as an online logistics marketplace where customers can submit logistics related requests and allow service providers to bid online. Customers will be able to select the preferred proposal and award the cargo contract to that bidder. Expected to be ready in 12 months, the Cargo Connect marketplace will reshape the industry and drive TPT’s growth. Sharla Chetty, Chief Information Officer, TPT, says, “A major feature of this solution is a logistics marketplace which will function in the same manner as existing market platforms in the transportation and hospitality industry. Customers could tender logistics requests on the platform and allow logistics service providers to bid and potentially be selected to undertake a logistics service.” Siyabulela Mhlaluka, General Manager, Sales and New Business Development, TPT, said, “The new solution will help us bring all logistics players under one platform, create transparency in the industry, as well us power the next leg of our growth journey.” “TCS has been partnering with progressive organizations across the world to develop new technology-enabled business models that power their growth and transformation journeys,” said Sumanta Roy, Head, TCS Middle East, Africa, and Mediterranean.

Explaining whether India is ready for driverless vehicles and drones, V Raju, Senior Vice President CL – Chemical, Pharma & Food Sector, Avvashya CCI Logistics at at CargoTalk’s fourth digital conclave, “At a moment it seems like a distant dream. But in 1970s or 80s we used to have human labour force working for the loading and unloading of cargo and every single activity was done only by the labour. And, if the labour was not in sufficient numbers the cargo operations used to come to a halt. Unloading a truck used to be dependent through metallic plates or metallic panels which used to rest against the trucks and the cargo used to be slit down those metallic panels. However, today things have gone to the scientific level. The entire planning in warehouse has been done by WMS; we never used to have them in the past. The forklifts, stackers are now battery operated ones; we never used to have even ordinary forklifts. This is how things have changed over a period of time.”

Amit Malakar, Chief Customer Officer, Welspun One talks about the lessons to be learnt from the pandemic at CargoTalk’s fourth digital conclave. He says, “COVID-19 has taught us few things, such as, how important it is to be digital in our business, consumer’s direct connection to brand and having multiple stock points rather than one to fulfil the demand quicker, to name a few. We have realised that industry players with robust supply chains and those who were well stocked and well replenished were the ones who survived. Calling logistics industry an important contributor to our economy, he continues, “There has been a lot of talk about warehouse consolidation over the last five years and now the government is also keen and trying to reduce some cost of supply chain. The warehousing industry has also got infrastructure status. Hence, things are moving in the positive direction in this industry.”