U.S. vessel imports were up 3.7 percent from 2012, which totaled over 18.2 million TEUs (twenty-foot containers) brought into the United States last year. U.S. imports in 2013 started off at a slow start but ended with a surprising and unexpected surge from July through December. Annual TEUs haven't been this high since 2007, which is a good sign for a strong recession rebound in the U.S. trade industry. So far in 2014, the first three weeks of imports in January are already 5.2 percent higher than the same time last year.
Cuba on Monday inaugurated a $957m port billed as the most modern in Latin America and crucial to the economic future of the communist-ruled island in a project financed by Brazil and equipped for ships passing through an expanded Panama Canal.
Many companies are looking beyond China to less developed nations for sourcing, says Mark Michaels, chief commercial officer at Damco. Michaels discusses supply chain risks around the expansion into less developed areas and the pressure on providers to deliver service comparable to that in mature markets.
Chris Caplice, executive director of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, discusses his research on identifying dominant designs in logistics and how these designs, in which companies are heavily invested, may be disrupted by emerging trends.
Import volume at the nation's major retail container ports is expected to grow 4.8 percent in January over the same month last year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. Estimates show 2013 up 2.8 percent over 2012.
Supply chain and logistics play key roles in responding to both acute and chronic humanitarian crises. Whether the cause is a natural disaster, armed conflict or simply undeveloped infrastructure, Jarrod Goentzel says the MIT Humanitarian Response Lab is working to improve supply chain response.
The UK must push ahead with expansion of capacity with new runways at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, according to the British International Freight Association, a trade group for UK freight forwarders and logistics services providers.
