The cargo division of Malaysia Airlines has launched new intra-Asia freighter service. MASkargo's twice weekly A330-200 freighter operation links its Kuala Lumpur hub to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand. Mohd Yonus Idris, acting chief executive of MASkargo, said cargo growth via Ho Chi Minh has been steady and the service would help build the carrier's Asian connectivity.

Gartner Inc. has released the findings from its eighth annual Supply Chain Top 25, its initiative to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts the business, and once again Apple topped the list. The supply chain top five included two other mainstays; Dell and P+G; and two that are newer to the ranking, but have been rising steadily; Amazon and McDonald's.

Sysco Corp. has operated very successfully for many years as a decentralized company, distributing $40bn annually in food and associated products to restaurants, schools and other meal-serving organizations. The company felt that it could do better in terms of logistics, however, and decided to centralize inbound transportation operations that previously were distributed among its 70 business units.

As the former CFO of such companies as Sprint, Eastman Kodak Co. and Unisys Corp., as well as vice president of finance of General Electric Co.'s plastics division, Robert Brust's management philosophy was to bring procurement into the finance department, at times meeting daily with the purchasing team to go over expenditures line by line.

Traceability always has been important to dairy cooperative Agri-Mark, but it has become even more of a focus since passage in 2010 of The Food Safety Modernization Act, which gives the Food and Drug Administration the right to make product recalls mandatory, rather than voluntary.

The worldwide supply chain management software market totaled $7.7bn in 2011, a 12.3-percent increase from 2010, according to Gartner Inc. It was the second year of double-digit growth for the SCM software market as supply chain investments kept their priority status and moved forward, despite caution from IT budget decision makers.

Container traffic through India's major ports fell 2.4 percent year over year in April, the first month of fiscal 2012-13, according to latest traffic figures released by the Indian Ports Association.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the city has reached a lease agreement with developer Aeroterm, launching construction of the Chicago O'Hare International Airport Northeast Cargo Center. The nearly $200m center, which will sit on approximately 65 acres of property, will be built in three separate phases.

The scale of China's sea trade activity has been revealed in the stark detail that the country has more than 25 ports that now each handle at least 100 million tonnes of cargo a year.