IN BRIEF: New Services and Solutions

Services

•  Consolidated Chassis Management (CCM) is set to launch SACP (South Atlantic Chassis Pool) 3.0 in October 2023. The new chassis pool provisioning program consists of 50,000 modernized chassis to service 75 locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. The first shipment of CCM new build container chassis arrived in Savannah in May 2023. Chassis will continue to be delivered over the next six months via various locations.

•  Cleveland Cold Storage is set to open its 156,000-square-foot cold storage facility later this summer, offering a range of frozen storage and distribution options for local, regional, and national shippers. The Cleveland, Ohio, facility features 122,000 square feet of -10°F freezer space, a 20,000-square-foot 34°F cold dock, and 10,000 square feet of dry storage for multi-customer use.

•  Latin America Cargo City finalized the construction of a new pharmaceutical warehouse in Uruguay. The new building is integrated with the existing infrastructure and will store vaccines and other biological products and drugs that will be shipped to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, and Colombia.

•  Saddle Creek Logistics Services is opening additional multi-client distribution centers in Walton, Kentucky; Joliet, Illinois; Myerstown, Pennsylvania; and North Las Vegas, Nevada—adding more than 1.8 million square feet of space.

Products

•  The new Combi-CB70E from forklift manufacturer Combilift is an electric counterbalance truck with multidirectional ability, allowing it to handle long and bulky loads in confined spaces. With a 15,500-pound lift capacity, the Combi-CB70E has large elastic tires and a compact wheelbase.

•  ORBCOMM’s new RT 8000 monitoring solution lets cold chain operators in the food distribution, retail logistics, and pharmaceutical industries track and monitor their temperature-controlled cargo. The unit is designed to reduce the frequency of field replacement and helps companies ensure products meet regulatory compliance and maintain integrity.

•  Southworth Products now offers a lift table stocking program, with its most popular hydraulic lift table models and other vertical lifting and positioning equipment available for shipment in one week or less. The Swift Lift 1 program includes lift table models that have capacities from 1,100 to 6,000 pounds and platforms up to 48 by 96 inches.

Technology

•  Ecommerce brands can increase cross-border ecommerce sales with Digital River’s expanded global logistics capabilities, including low-cost shipping, product classification, and customs clearance.

•  Ehrhardt Partner Group launched a routing and scheduling solution called Greenplan, the newest solution within the EPG ONE Supply Chain Execution Suite. Greenplan helps companies calculate routes while addressing challenges such as costs, time windows, and the need to reduce CO2 emissions. It also includes time-of-day-dependent traffic flow speeds in the calculation.

•  Comau introduced the MI.RA Picker, an automation solution for perception-based random bin picking. Adaptable to different brands of commercial robots, customized bins, and grippers, the picking solution uses two high-resolution laser sensors and a central camera to autonomously recognize, locate, and grasp randomly placed objects at a rate of up to 40 pieces per minute.

•  WARP, a freight network providing middle-mile solutions, now offers a delivery optimization experience program for LTL shippers with a $1 pallet fee if its technology isn’t able to optimize a shipper’s load based on cost, speed, or efficiency. The program involves same-/next-day delivery within a 100-mile radius of 10 metro areas.

•  A2Z Smart Technologies launched the Cust2Mate platform to help retailers reduce food waste by promoting expiring foods to shoppers in real time. Through the Cust2Mate platform, consumers can enable in-cart payment.

•  The ET6x series of rugged, 5G Android, artificial intelligence-powered tablets from Zebra Technologies is designed for workers in warehouses, manufacturing plants, and ports/rail yards. The ET60 (pictured) and ET65 are 2-in-1 Android tablets with a friction-hinge keyboard that transforms them into laptops. The display is protected with shatter- and scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass.

•  Loftware released NiceLabel 10.3, the latest addition to its cloud product line of labeling software. The enterprise labeling solution features integration capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management and SAP, letting users design, manage, and print labels from enterprise resource planning software.

•  Companies now have the tools to measure, track, and communicate their plastic action initiatives—from decreasing plastic usage to incorporating recycled plastics to offsetting their footprint with plastic credits—with the Oceanworks Plastic Action Dashboard.

•  Supply chain risk management software provider Avetta launched Cyber Risk Solution to provide companies with visibility to cybersecurity risks in their supply chain. The tool scores cyber health in 10 areas and delivers an aggregate grade for each supplier.

•  Logility added new functionality to its cloud-based Logility Digital Supply Chain Platform to increase visibility into vendor and supplier relationships. The release introduces the ability to optimize a company’s network design for Scope 3 emissions.

•  DHL Aviation, the in-house airline of DHL Express, introduced an optional GoGreen Plus service for its air freight product. GoGreen Plus enables air freight customers to reduce the CO2 emissions caused by their freight by using sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which is made from waste oils. Customers set emission reduction targets and determine how much SAF they want to use.

•  The heavy-duty Apex 1000 ergonomic power station from Newcastle Systems adjusts to the height of the warehouse associate, from 5-feet to 6.5-feet-tall, providing full-screen access to ERP, WMS, MES, and other information systems while on the move. Its hanging printer shelf accommodates most industrial barcode printers.

Transportation

•  Shippers will have a new direct rail connection and corridor linking Mexico, Texas, and the U.S. Southeast with an agreement reached by Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC), CSX Corporation, and Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W). The railroads have agreed to create a new direct CPKC-CSX interchange connection in Alabama. CPKC and CSX will each acquire or operate portions of Meridian & Bigbee Railroad, a G&W-owned railway in Mississippi and Alabama.

•  Lufthansa Cargo expanded cargo services to two airports in Mexico City. From its hub in Frankfurt, the cargo airline operates freighter flights to the new Felipe Ángeles Airport, which opened in March 2022. Additionally, Lufthansa Airlines passenger aircraft regularly transport goods as belly cargo to Mexico City Airport.

•  UWL expanded its inland point intermodal (IPI) program for the Sun Chief Express service, which operates between Southeast Asia and the United States and Canada via Seattle. The service now includes access to two IPI locations in Ohio—Cleveland and Columbus.

•  Maersk’s Al Maha service now calls at three Saudi ports: Jeddah Islamic Port, King Abdulaziz Port, and Jubail Commercial Port. The new route links Saudi Arabia’s hubs to six ports across the Middle East.

•  Estes Express Lines opened a terminal in Banning, California, to enable faster freight transfers. Using all electric forklifts, the new facility has eight electric tractors on site and features 133 dock doors.