newsworthy
electronic invoicing comes to
ocean shipping
Global Transaction Services (GTS), a unit of Citigroup, has
partnered with supply chain technology company GT Nexus
to offer electronic invoice payment and presentment services
like those long available in the international air-freight market
to the $200 billion ocean freight industry. Meanwhile, e-com-merce provider Inttra announced separate deals with freight
forwarding and logistics giant Kuehne + Nagel and CMA
CGM, the world’s third-largest container line, where the companies will electronically transact ocean freight payments
across the Inttra platform.
According to industry estimates, 150 million ocean freight
invoice transactions are processed per year, with costs ranging
from $20 to $60 per invoice. Kuehne + Nagel and Inttra said
in a statement that the industry spends $500 million more
than it should due to payment and presentment inefficiencies.
For Citi’s Global Transaction Services unit, the move into
ocean services represents a step toward developing what one
GTS executive called a “global EIPP (electronic invoicing payment and presentment) offering.” The unit is already considered the market leader in electronic processing of air-cargo
invoices, managing about $5 billion in transactions per year.
Brent Flynn, global logistics senior head for GTS, said in a
statement that the company is “looking to modify this existing
solution and make similar strides in the ocean space.”
The ocean freight sector’s late arrival to the electronic processing party is largely due to a lack of common, industrywide
standards. GT Nexus has solved that problem by developing an
IT platform that can be shared by thousands of companies using
a common set of partners, says Greg Kefer, director, corporate
marketing for the company. The platform allows invoicing
information to be freely exchanged between partners without
the confusion of working through different technologies and
without the cost of maintaining individual systems, he says.
After 50 years of manufacturing electric lift trucks, Crown Equipment
Corp. has entered the IC market for the
first time. The New Bremen, Ohio-based company
has unveiled its first internal-combustion vehicle,
the Crown C- 5. The new vehicle will be built at
Crown’s manufacturing facility in Green Castle, Ind.
Although Crown hasn’t made its own IC vehicles
until now, its dealers have been servicing internal-combustion trucks for decades. That experience
provided valuable insight into what IC systems can
go wrong and why, says Jim Moran, Crown’s senior
vice president. Examples include overheating transmissions, brakes that have a short life, poor air
cooling and circulation, and short maintenance
cycles. Crown says it has addressed these issues in
the C- 5, which is designed for heavy-duty users in
demanding environments. The vehicle is rated for
4,000- to 6,500-pound capacities.
The C- 5 relies on an LPG (liquefied petroleum
gas) engine developed in collaboration with John
Deere. Crown says the engine is built with tougher
components than commonly found in IC lift trucks,
like a larger oil filter that can stand up to the rigors
of continuous use. The new model also features
Crown Power Brakes, which use discs instead of
drums to provide fast braking and long wear. An
optional On Demand Cooling system automatically
blows debris away from the radiator at startup—a
feature designed to reduce the overheating common to many IC-powered trucks.
Crown says it has been testing the C- 5 for three
years with over 300 trucks in the field.
—David Maloney
Crown moves into IC
lift truck market
ground breakers
; Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Jackson Family Wines has
opened a 650,000-square-foot distribution center in
American Canyon, Calif. The new facility will store and ship
Kendall-Jackson wines in addition to 40 other brands produced by clients of Biagi Brothers, the Napa-based trucking
company that handles Kendall-Jackson’s shipments.
; SunnyRidge Farm has opened a new 51,000-square-foot
distribution and packing center in Plant City, Fla. SunnyRidge
Farm is a family-owned and -operated grower, packer, and
shipper of berries.
; United Supermarkets has purchased 15 acres of land in
the Dallas-Fort Worth Alliance Airport area for the company’s
second distribution center. The 200,000-square-foot distribution facility will serve the retailer’s stores in Dallas-Fort
Worth, Abilene, and Wichita Falls.
; TBC Corp., a marketer of automotive replacement tires,
plans to occupy a 1. 1 million-square-foot distribution center
in the Rockefeller Group Foreign Trade Zone/Charleston in
Berkeley County, S.C. The new DC will primarily support
TBC’s wholesale operations.
