Sometimes city governments issue zoning requirements prohibiting the construction of giant retail stores. The latest: Swansboro, North Carolina, where town residents are hotly debating an ordinance that, in effect, would ban construction of a Walmart.

Goodman Group, Australia's largest listed industrial property group, says its wholly owned North American subsidiary, Goodman Birtcher, has received approvals for the development of a proposed $350m logistics center in Linden, N.J. The project is part of the recently announced $1.4bn development pipeline in the key U.S. logistics markets of California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In 2010, massive flooding in Pakistan profoundly affected the country and disrupted supply chains globally, spiking international prices for cotton, rice and wheat. This was only one in a string of weather disasters - including heat waves, hurricanes and wildfires - that have affected supply chains on a large scale in the past decade.

Goodman continues to invest in key logistics hubs across Europe, with the expansion of its activities at the Port of Hamburg, where it has acquired a 35,000-square-meter property in the Altenwerder Freight Village – one of Germany's main logistics hubs in the immediate vicinity of the container terminal. It also plans to develop 12,000 square meters of new logistics space at the 81,000-square-meter site.

Florida took a beating during the Great Recession. Like many of its Sun Belt peers, the prominent roles of real estate, tourism and financial services led to more than 650,000 jobs lost between 2007 and 2010. Many of the state’s largest metro areas remain thousands of jobs below their peak levels.

SC-Integrity Inc., also known as Lojack SCI, is partnering with Locus Traxx Worldwide to provide customers with technology for enhancing supply-chain and cargo security.

Essex headquartered freight forwarding outfit the Woodland Group has a twenty-year pedigree when it comes to serving the supply chain needs of the book trade, principally under its former persona as Bookbridge, and the company continues to export more magazines from the UK than any other logistics company.