UPS said on Friday its executives had never expressed an interest in buying Dutch mail and logistics company TNT, after the German newspaper report in “Die Welt” sent TNT’s shares soaring. United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS), the world’s largest package carrier, said senior executives had met a group of European reporters at its Atlanta headquarters on Wednesday and questions were asked about the company’s acquisition strategy.”At no time during these discussions did UPS executives specifically discuss individual companies as acquisition targets,” UPS said in a statement.

Read the rest of this eLog »

Brazil’s contract logistics industry is relatively young in terms of service and development. It is seeing rapid growth on the back of resurgence in the Brazilian economy, together with sophistication brought in by multinational logistics providers and greater realization by manufacturers and retailers of the benefits of outsourcing logistics activities.

Read the rest of this eLog »

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Friday released the result of the first quota bidding for textile export to the European Union next year. A total of 5,284 bid offers had been received by the ministry, with 3,385 enterprises acquiring export quotas. Most enterprises winning quotas are competitive ones which badly need more export quotas and new enterprises which plan to enter the EU market.

Read the rest of this eLog »

Global freight forwarding operator Panalpina has successfully listed on the Swiss stock exchange. Including additionally placed shares in connection with an over-allotment option, a total of 14,025,000 registered shares of Panalpina were sold in the IPO, which corresponds to an offer size of CHF1.12 billion and results in a free float of approximately 56%.

Read the rest of this eLog »

The Swedish retailer IKEA specializes in self-assembly furniture where consumers are not just the builders but also often the means of out-bound logistics, responsible for picking up and transporting the products they buy home by themselves. There’s no room for wasted space in product packaging. Designs for furniture, lamps, kitchen equipment and beds are logistically formed. “Air out, product in,” is one commonly used principle of its design and packaging.

Read the rest of this eLog »

EPCglobal Inc, a subsidiary of GS1, a not-for-profit standards organization entrusted with driving the global adoption of Electronic Product Code (EPC) technology and the EPCglobal Network, announced the ratification of a new software standard - called the Application Level Events standard - for using EPC technology in the supply chain.

Read the rest of this eLog »

An important corollary to Moore?s Law is that high-tech products will see a constantly improving price/performance ratio, which is reflected in a cutthroat market. An AMR Research report says the supply chain in the high-tech industry is suffering from a cutthroat market, and that companies are driving costs down at the expense of customer service and perfect order performance rates. ?The results are not a surprise. The high-tech industry is known for its relentless focus on cost reduction,? says AMR analyst Bill Swanton.?But at what point do lower unit costs obscure the sight of customer service issues and profitability?? High-Tech has traded off customer service to achieve low supply chain costs. Is this the right choice?

Read the rest of this eLog »

The fifth round of Sino-US textile negotiations ended without reaching any agreement, Chinese Ministry of Commerce said here Thursday.

Read the rest of this eLog »

The Deutsche Post World Net (DPWN) subsidiary?s DHL, the world’s leading express delivery and logistics company, announced that its Disaster Response Team has managed the delivery of over 4.77 million pounds of international relief supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina across the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Over 27 flights of relief supplies donated by governments around the world have passed through the DHL Disaster Response operation at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville, Arkansas.

Read the rest of this eLog »

RFID has been adopted by many leading US companies like Wal-Mart, Metro, Tesco, etc. A lot of these companies have China as their main supplier and if they have to implement RFID throughout the supply chain, then China has to become a part of the RFID implementation process that is being carried out in the US. China too is keen to implement RFID so that its goods continue to get shipped to Europe and the US according to the RFID Gazette. On the other hand the RFID weblog has another opinion.

Read the rest of this eLog »