Driven by rising domestic demand in China and by increased intra-Asian and so-called South-South trade, international seaborne trade performed relatively well in 2012, with volumes increasing by 4.3 percent, reaching 9.2 billion tons for the first time ever, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's Review of Maritime Transport 2013 reports.

Streamline, a vendor of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications for logistics and supply-chain management, has launched its Winter 2013 release.

DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight unit within Deutsche Post DHL, has broken ground on a $35m facility at O'Hare International Airport, which will include 53,000 square feet of office space and 423,030 square feet of warehousing, and is expected to be the largest DHL Global Forwarding building in the U.S.

Getting the funds and approval from executives to implement and/or expand transportation services and systems sometimes takes the assistance of 3PLs who can provide detailed explanations of the long-term benefits of specific supply chain strategies.

Changes in global trade have left freight forwarders and logistics operators open to additional liability, warns an insurance specialist.

There was a small improvement in airfreight growth in October, according to the International Air Transport Association. Compared to October 2012, global freight tonne kilometers rose four percent, with growth in all regions except Africa.