PANALPINA WINS IBM ASIA CONTRACT

PANALPINA WINS IBM ASIA CONTRACT    Panalpina has been selected by IBM Asia to provide supply chain services between Asia and Europe from next year.
   Shipments will include PCs, laptops and data storage systems at IBM’s two Hungarian manufacturing plants in Szekesfehervar and Vac.
   Panalpina will handle delivery of production components from Asia to Europe and will operate a hub with vendor-managed inventory in Hungary, from where shipments will be delivered on a just-in-time basis to the factories.
   The end products will be received by Panalpina ex-factory and exported back to Asia as well as to Australia and New Zealand.
   Panalpina said that Japan, China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are the most important countries for this traffic. Other destinations include Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines.
   The freight shipments will be transported exclusively by air and handled primarily at Panalpina’s European airfreight hub in Luxembourg, as well as at Frankfurt airport. Truck transport between Germany, Luxembourg and Hungary will be coordinated and monitored by Panalpina as part of fourth-party logistics management.
   Panalpina said that it has dedicated Boeing 747s with capacity of 100 freight tons via its subsidiary ASB Air, formerly SwissGlobalCargo, which will supplement the existing four weekly Cargolux flights between Luxembourg and Komatsu.