Walmart Inc. has begun telling online shoppers that some products in its warehouses are “out of stock” after the retailer changed its e-commerce systems to avoid orders deemed too expensive to ship.

The scale of the problem is staggering. Each year, 1.6 billion tons of food worth about $1.2tr are lost or go to waste — one-third of the total amount of food produced globally. To put the figure in perspective, that is 10 times the mass of the island of Manhattan.

Chinese technology company Yuanben and Maritime Silk Road Platform, part of China's Zhuozhi Logistics Group, have signed an agreement to provide blockchain services for global maritime freight.

UPS is expanding delivery options for e-commerce shipments in Taiwan with the addition of more than 850 “e-lockers” as alternate delivery locations (ALDs).