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Cargo Logistics Canada Expo to feature talks on Canada’s what-if Silk Road, e-commerce, cannabis logistics

Cargo Logistics Canada expo next month to focus on Canada Silk Road, e-commerce, cannabis logistics (Photo: Informa)

“Where is Canada’s Silk Road?,” a hypothetical exploration of what a Canadian silk road would look like, and the “The E-Commerce Effect,” are the two overarching themes of the Cargo Logistics Canada (CLC) Expo + Conference, a multimodal event set for February 5-7 at the Vancouver Convention Center West in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The conference will feature a panel discussion entitled “Deciphering the Enigma that is U.S. Trade Policy,” and will examine the U.S.-China trade dispute and the revised North American Free Trade Agreement now known as “USMCA.” There will also be a variation on the “Silk Road” theme with the panel “Where is Canada’s Green Road? Cannabis Logistics.” One of the panelists will be Ryan Yablonsky, international logistics lead of Canopy Growth, one of the world’s largest cannabis producers.

The event will have have three main tracks covering Multimodal, Cargo Tech and Cold Chain.

Informa, which manages the conference, traditionally invites companies who are the owners/customers of freight/supply chains to attend as its guests through its “Priority Shipper” program. In addition to having access to the conference, these special guests will receive an offsite tour of the London Drugs Distribution Center, as well as three “Priority Shipper Market Intelligence” briefings where industry experts will speak about retail, commodities and manufacturing.

The event’s showfloor will feature two main stages of conference programming with about 150 exhibitors in the “Tech LIVE!” area within the Tech Hub and the Trade Advice Hub.

FreightWaves, which is partnering with Informa for the event, will be involved in two panels – the “Cargo Tech Leaders Keynote Roundtable” and FreightWaves’ well-known roundtable on “What the Data is Telling Us About the Freight Market: A Data-Driven Market Discussion.”

The conference’s mission is to attract multimodal supply chains from across the transport modes, as well as distribution/warehousing. The distribution/ warehousing discipline will be featured later this year as a stand-alone event, “The Distribution/Logistics Summit,” to be held in Toronto.

Mark Solomon

Formerly the Executive Editor at DC Velocity, Mark Solomon joined FreightWaves as Managing Editor of Freight Markets. Solomon began his journalistic career in 1982 at Traffic World magazine, ran his own public relations firm (Media Based Solutions) from 1994 to 2008, and has been at DC Velocity since then. Over the course of his career, Solomon has covered nearly the whole gamut of the transportation and logistics industry, including trucking, railroads, maritime, 3PLs, and regulatory issues. Solomon witnessed and narrated the rise of Amazon and XPO Logistics and the shift of the U.S. Postal Service from a mail-focused service to parcel, as well as the exponential, e-commerce-driven growth of warehouse square footage and omnichannel fulfillment.