Shippers are still steaming over delays caused by West Coast dockworkers during contract negotiations with terminal operators in late 2014 and early 2015. But problems at the region's ports extend well beyond union intransigence.
Hanjin Newport Co., a division of Hanjin Shipping, is using an ultrahigh-frequency RFID solution to help manage its 20 percent growth in traffic this year at its deep-water terminal in the city of Busan, South Korea.
Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, many of the old Communist-era restrictions for setting up business have been removed. For some logistics companies, the largest barriers to entry come not from Chinese red tape but from other Western competition.
Revenues for U.S. 3PLs, which provide services ranging from booking truck drivers to managing warehouses, rose 7.4 percent to $157.2bn last year, faster than the 2.8 percent growth in logistics spending overall, according to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, which recently released its annual State of Logistics report.
Over the past few decades, the rise of emerging markets - initially as sources of cheap labor and then as rapidly growing consumer markets and centers of capital investment and innovation - has caused most companies of size and stature to enlarge their global ambitions. But despite this concerted push to globalize, few companies are ready to build and run truly global organizations and operations.
Choice Logistics has introduced Service Sync, a multi-vendor, device-agnostic, global positioning system (GPS) tracking and event-management application for the logistics industry.
SkyBitz Inc., a provider of remote asset tracking and information-management services, has integrated its InSight asset tracking and management Web application into the ALK Maps app of ALK Technologies.
Shipowners operating in the trans-Atlantic dry bulk market, where prices have been plumbing two-year lows on the back of acute vessel oversupply and shifting patterns in minerals demand, could be facing brighter days, according to the latest special report released by Platts.