Ahold USA plans to launch a vendor collaboration initiative next month that will include sending POS, supply chain and merchandising data via a third-party to some number of its CPG suppliers in order to improve product availability and customer satisfaction.

The International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA) announced that the ISCEA Ptak Prize is offering 1,000 scholarships for 3rd- and 4th-year Saudi Arabian university students. The scholarships allow the eligible students to obtain internationally recognized, CSCA (Certified Supply Chain Analyst) qualification free of charge. This initiative is to support the kingdom's supply chain and human capital development goals over the next ten years. Each year ISCEA Ptak Prize will award 100 scholarships with the total value awarded more than $1mn.

The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9m grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year's funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The road freight market in Europe has been particularly subdued over the past few months, according to the Freightex European Road Freight Rate Index, compiled by Transport Intelligence. However, the market experienced short bursts of volatility, a strange situation which is largely attributed of the recession across much of the continent.

President Obama didn't draw the connection in his State of the Union address, but his plan to raise the minimum wage might help him with his plan to curb illegal immigration.