NOTED: The Supply Chain In Brief

Green Seeds

• Maersk will add 300 electric trucks to its North America network—the largest heavy-duty electric truck deployment to date. The trucks will be delivered between 2023 and 2025 for use by Performance Team, Maersk’s North American warehousing, distribution, and transportation business. The trucks will be operated using technology company Einride’s digital road freight operating system and charging solutions.
• The Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) aims to reduce carbon emissions across all facilities and become net zero by 2031, coinciding with its 75th anniversary. Its agenda focuses on 100% of the greenhouse gas emissions directly controlled by Massport-owned facilities, equipment, and purchased electricity.
• To increase traceability and transparency in its global palm oil supply chain, Unilever launched a pilot program of the GreenToken by SAP solution. Aiming to achieve sustainability benchmarks, Unilever applied GreenToken to source more than 188,000 tons of palm oil fruit through a pilot program conducted in Indonesia. The solution helps Unilever track, verify, and report the palm oil supply chain in near real time.

Up the Chain

• General Motors named Jeffrey Morrison vice president, global purchasing and supply chain. In this role, he will develop supplier relationships and help the company accelerate electric vehicle (EV) launches, building a scalable and sustainable EV supply chain.
• Outdoor specialty retailer Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings appointed Tom Clement as vice president, supply chain/omnichannel operations. In this newly created role, he leads the company’s distribution, transportation, planning/allocation, and omnichannel operations.

M & A

• Veho, a technology company that enables next-day package delivery, acquired reverse logistics startup QuikReturn. Veho plans to accelerate the Veho Returns product and expand into 50 U.S. markets by the end of 2022.
• Deutsche Post DHL Group closed the acquisition of J.F. Hillebrand Group AG (Hillebrand) and its subsidiaries. Hillebrand is now part of DHL Global Forwarding, Freight.
• AFS Logistics acquired DTA Services, a freight bill audit, cost allocation, and analytics firm located in Toronto. DTA will continue serving clients under its established brand as an AFS operating company and will maintain its current team, service offering, and location.
• Dayton Freight Lines, a provider of regional less-than-truckload transportation services, purchased the cartage division of Valley Companies. Dayton Freight acquired Valley assets including service centers, trucks, and miscellaneous equipment; Valley Logistics and Warehousing is not part of the purchase.
• Zebra Technologies plans to acquire Matrox Imaging, a developer of advanced machine vision components and systems, to expand its offerings in the automation and vision technology solution space.
• Lineage Logistics acquired MTC Logistics, a cold chain provider with four locations on or near the ports of Baltimore, Maryland; Wilmington, Delaware; and Mobile, Alabama. Through the acquisition of these facilities, Lineage adds nearly 38 million cubic feet of capacity and more than 113,000 pallet positions in the United States.

Sealed Deals

• Republic National Distributing Company, a wholesale beverage alcohol distributor, selected Manhattan Active Warehouse Management to run its growing supply chain network. The distributor selected the cloud-native solution from Manhattan Associates so it could focus on customer service and plans to roll it out in its distribution centers across North America over the next 30 months.
• Consumer goods company Orkla chose HICX, a supplier management platform, to manage its increasingly complex supplier ecosystem and onboard new suppliers with as little operational disruption as possible. Orkla aims to remove friction points from supplier relationships and enable a single version of truth across all supplier data.
• Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, a distributor of beverage alcohol, selected Ryder System to restructure its inbound transportation and implement its visibility and collaborative logistics technology RyderShare. The distributor aims to make its inbound supply chain more efficient and resilient, in order to get its suppliers’ products to market even faster.

Good Works

• The CMA CGM Foundation provided humanitarian supplies to Ukrainian civilians in partnership with the CDCS (Crisis and Support Centre of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs). The CMA CGM Foundation completed an emergency shipment of 55 tons of humanitarian supplies, including food, tents, and medical equipment, via a cargo plane from Paris to Warsaw, Poland.
• The Trucking Cares Foundation donated more than $40,000 to three organizations involved in Ukrainian humanitarian relief efforts: Save the Children, the International Red Cross, and the United Nations Children’s Fund. These organizations were recommended by the group Trucking & Logistics Professionals for Ukraine, which launched a fundraising and awareness campaign in response to the crisis.
• Union Pacific donated $500,000 to humanitarian relief for Ukraine, its largest-ever corporate disaster relief donation. The funds will be divided between the American Red Cross and Save the Children and come after UP employees drove nearly $50,000 in matching donations from the company earlier in the year.

Recognition

• EnerSys, a provider of stored energy solutions, earned the 2022 Most Valuable Supplier (MVS) Award from the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA). Every year, MHEDA recognizes fewer than 10% of all member companies with the MVS Award to acknowledge suppliers that have demonstrated commitment to their dealer network, employees, and the community.
• Roadrunner, a less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, was recognized by Amazon with the On-Time Pickup Performance Award and the EDI Compliance Award. Roadrunner outperformed Amazon LTL carriers with a best-in-class on-time pickup rate and nabbed the second award with its efficient transmission of confidential data via EDI.
• Leonard’s Express, a provider of refrigerated trucking, dry van, warehousing, and freight brokerage services, won the Trucking Association of New York’s (TANY) Fleet Safety Award in the large-class, general commodities truckload category. The TANY Fleet Safety Awards recognize member fleets with the best record of safe operation in New York State.

Shovel Ready

• The Canaveral Port Authority broke ground on a $48-million project to rebuild Port Canaveral’s North Cargo Berth 3. Built in 1976, North Cargo Berth 3 has been out of service since 2014. Demolition of the existing pier began in December 2021; it will be replaced with an 880-foot-long multipurpose wharf with the channel width to accommodate larger cargo vessels simultaneously at berth.