Category Archives: Technology

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.”

Etihad Cargo, the cargo and logistics arm of the Etihad Aviation Group, has revamped the etihadcargo.com portal to provide customers with a heightened and intuitive online experience. The new-look website includes the introduction of quicker booking processes and streamlined flows, a personalised dashboard, recommendations, and dynamic pricing. Following customer feedback, the site also now incorporates a new dynamic map of the carrier’s global network which provides detailed information on Etihad Cargo teams and its global network outstation capabilities. Migrating to a customer-centric platform has cut the time customers take to complete a booking from more than two minutes previously to less than 45 seconds, equating to only 12 clicks, compared 23 needed before. New features such as requesting shipping quotes, booking ad-hoc prices which have been negotiated offline and booking shipments based on arrival timelines have been introduced to streamline the user experience. Customers will also have the ability to create and manage booking templates based on previous purchases. “With a fresh look and feel incorporating key features requested by customers, the site’s entire user experience has been enriched to provide improved response time and functionality across customers’ booking journeys,” explained Martin Drew, SVP Sales and Cargo at Etihad Aviation Group.

dnata,has partnered with Gather AI, a US-based technology start-up, and launched autonomous drones in its warehouses at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) in the USA. The aim is to digitize acceptance and warehouse inventory processes by monitoring shipments with 99.8 percent accuracy. Gather AI’s software enables the drones to map the environment, collect inventory data, count cases, measure temperature, and read barcodes using only their cameras, without the need for any additional active infrastructure. The drones are paired to a tablet device providing live inventory data. The collected data can be viewed directly on the tablet or the web, via a user-friendly application.

Jeena & Co., a legacy logistics brand has been at the forefront of digital adoption and tech enabled innovation in end to end logistics solutions, has once again, taken a lead in embracing the latest in supply chain technology innovations. As part of this strategic partnership, Jeena has provided on ground logistics support to TechEagle in successful completion of Asia’s First Drone based vaccine delivery project in complete cold chain environment for the Telangana government. During the project, TechEagle’s Drone delivered vaccines in a temperature controlled box weighing 2.5kg for an aerial distance of 11.5km Drone maintained 2.4 degree Celsius through out the flight. For the project Jeena Criticare managed the on-ground logistics & transportation while TechEagel was the Drone OEM & Operator, for the specialised drone enabled medical supply chain.