American Shipper

   The supply chain design software provider LLamasoft this week released a tool aimed at helping companies manage optimize inventory levels.    The product, Inventory Guru, is intended to help companies better understand demand variability to right-sized safety stock. The tool is ultimately designed to help companies safeguard themselves against inventory variability.    “Traditional inventory […]

   Dallas-based freight forwarder World Trade Cargo & Logistics, Inc. (WTCL) has has begun using eFreight from technology provider Intellect Technologies, the company said this week.    The Intellect eFreight system is designed for forwarders to provide e-commerce capabilities and direct access to U.S. Customs and to ocean carriers.    “It’s a configurable system that allowed […]

In August, European and Middle Eastern carriers fueled the activity increase, with airlines in Europe seeing demand tick up 3.4 percent on a 4.2 percent capacity increase. Middle Eastern cargo demand rose 23.8 percent year over year.

Digitimes said in the past Apple products had to be first shipped to Hong Kong or Shenzhen, China, to complete the export procedures and then imported back before they could hit store shelves in China.

   The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) is preparing for its second conference in Singapore, Jan. 22-24.    The event, Effective Strategies for Managing Supply Chain Risk: Assuring the Viability of Your Supply Chain, will examine supply chain risk, discuss strategies to improve resilience, and prepare logistics professionals to deal more effectively with […]

   The American Farm Bureau Federation on Friday urged Congress to reauthorize the Water Resources Development Act and make more funds available for harbor infrastructure maintenance and upgrades.    “There are no trucks or trains to Asia,” Steve Baccus, chairman of the association’s Trade Advisory Committee, said following a visit to the Port of Oakland, […]

A partial shutdown of the U.S. government due to gridlock in Congress over a short-term spending extension will cost the U.S. economy about $300 million per day, or $1.5 billion per week, but lost productivity could worsen.

This is just the latest blow for the Justice Department in the merger case, which is set to go to trial on Nov. 25. Due to the government shutdown, Justice officials had pushed for a March start to the trial.

   The International Civil Aviation Organization has elected new member states for a three-year term to the organization’s governing council.    Eleven new members were elected to the 36-representative body.      The voting process, divided into three parts, covered states important to air transport in the first phase of voting, and states important to international […]

   ContainerPort Group has moved to a larger and more centrally located facility in Indianapolis.    The new facility is located near Interstates 65, 70 and 465 and a short drive to the CSX rail ramp and the newly opened Indiana Rail Road Co.’s intermodal ramp, which is operated by CPG and serviced by the […]

   The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission has received three ocean transportation intermediary license applications and a change for review.    The FMC received a non-vessel-operating common carrier license application from Zhejiang Sunmarr International Transportation Co., City of Industry, Calif. (Ya Liu, deputy general manager); and an ocean freight forwarder license application from Gator Source and Supply Co., […]

FMC reviews 3 OTI license applications

The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission has received three ocean transportation intermediary license applications and changes for review.

   Seaspan Corp. said it has exercised options to build five 10,000-TEU containerships at Jiangsu New Yangzi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Yangzi Xinfu Shipbuilding Co., Ltd.    The ships are scheduled for delivery in 2015 and will be constructed using Seaspan’s fuel efficient SAVER design.    Seaspan said it expects to sign long-term time charters […]

   Japanese ocean carrier MOL announced an agreement with Kansai Electric Power Co. for joint ownership of two new liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers that will sail under long-term charter contracts signed in June 2012.    Kansai Electric Power will hold a 70 percent share in the Bahamas-based MOL subsidiary that will own the two […]

   The organization asked TSA Administrator John Pistole to certify that its 100-percent cargo screening program for passenger flights has achieved the threshold mandated by Congress and to remove the reporting requirement for screening data.

U.S. economy to grow about 2.5 percent next year, experts say.   The U.S. economy will continue to muddle along at nearly the same slow pace of the past couple years in 2014, according to economists at last week’s FTR Associates conference in Indianapolis.     William Strauss, senior economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said a […]

   The U.S. Export-Import Bank will support for a “seven-figure purchase” of two new American agricultural aircraft by Jose Antonio Goncalves Viana, a soybean and corn agribusiness in Brazil.    The buyer is a repeat customer of Air Tractor Inc., a small business manufacturer of specialty aircraft. For this transaction, Ex-Im Bank provided a medium-term […]

   Under the multi-year contract, American Worldwide Agencies will serve as sales agent for AAL’s direct port calls to and from Long Beach and Los Angeles; Vancouver and Everett, Wash.; and ports in British Columbia, Korea and China.

   The London-based industry consultancy Drewry predicts that more ocean carriers will cancel sailings instead of withdrawing whole services during the winter and this practice will continue until the P3 alliance of Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping Co., and CMA CGM begins its new services in the second quarter of next year.    “More sailing cancellations are on […]