The American Trucking Associations' advanced seasonally adjusted for-hire truck tonnage index increased 2.9 percent in January after jumping 2.4 percent in December. Tonnage has surged at least 2.4 percent every month since November, gaining a total of 9.1 percent over that period. As a result, the SA index equaled 125.2 (2000=100) in January versus 121.7 in December. January's index was the highest on record. Compared with January 2012, the SA index was up a robust 6.5 percent the best year-over-year result since December 2011.

TNT Express has opened a new hub near Romania's third largest airport, Traian Vuia International Airport, in Timisoara. TNT Romania said its new Timisoara Centre was built to provide operational and technological support specifically for high-performance express services.

Four of the busiest airports in the country will get tightened cargo security this year to enhance screening of dangerous items, a move that raises concerns from business people who say the extra measure will make the current "slow" service even less efficient.

The CEO of Maersk Group toured Nigeria, Angola and Ghana in a bid to focus on African infrastructure improvements. As African economies boom, infrastructure improvements become more important to turning the growth into sustainable development, and Maersk is planning to take a role in this transition.

In recent years, supply chains have become longer and more complex, while the severity and frequency of supply chain disruptions seems to be increasing. In close cooperation with Accenture, the World Economic Forum recently presented a report, "Building Resilience in Supply Chains," at the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. It indicates that significant supply chain disruptions reduce the share price of affected companies by as much as seven percent on average.

New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.

The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market will see strong growth in 2013, experts predict. The increase in spending will represent a 24.5-percent increase from 2012, with revenue forecast to reach $462.3m in 2013, according to Gartner. The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market is forecast by the research group to grow 13.4 percent in 2012 to total $371.2m, compared to $110bn worldwide.

United Parcel Service of America (UPS) has formed a partnership with electronic circuit boards manufacturer, Jabil Circuit, to provide reverse logistics services globally. Under the partnership, UPS's logistics and distribution business unit and Jabil's aftermarket services division will provide optimized reverse logistics solutions for return and repair programs to original equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprises.

Swiss manufacturer ABB has said it will focus on reducing cost to offset economic uncertainty. In order to combat the sluggish global economy that has damaged sales for many providers of industrial equipment, ABB has focused on the bottom line. "In the short term, there are still a lot of questions around the pace of growth in Europe and the U.S. and the timing of the rebound in China," said Joe Hogan, chief executive officer of ABB.

The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9m grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year's funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.