Group developing legal framework for
shared supply chains in Europe
A business consortium in Europe is developing a legal framework that
will allow companies on the continent to collaborate on transportation
and warehousing services without violating European antitrust laws.
The group, known as Collaboration Concepts for Co-modality
(CO3) expects to complete its work sometime next year, according to
Sven Verstrepen, business development director for TriVizor, a
Belgian company that orchestrates supply chain collaborations. The
project was seeded with a $2 million grant from the European
Commission (EC), the European Union’s (EU) antitrust arm, because the
EC felt shared transportation and warehousing services could help reduce
Europe’s dependence on foreign oil, ease traffic congestion, and cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to Verstrepen.
The legal framework, among other things, will outline how companies
could establish a “neutral trustee” to organize and manage the shared network so competing shippers could work together without running afoul of
the law, Verstrepen said. “Legally, you need to put up a firewall between
competitors,” he told the Council of Supply Chain Management
Professionals (CSCMP) Europe Conference 2013 in Amsterdam in May.
In addition to developing the legal framework, the consortium is sponsoring pilot tests for “co-loading,” where shippers use the same carrier to
deliver their goods to shared customers. Verstrepen said the tests would
help the consortium demonstrate ways shippers can distribute costs and
share the benefits from logistics collaboration.
Verstrepen said the participants in the pilot programs are well-known
multinational companies that don’t want to be identified until the pilots
have proved successful.
“INFORMAL ENCOURAGEMENT”
CO3 was formed in 2010 to lay the foundation for the sharing of transportation and distribution services. An industry board meets twice a year
to ensure that the organization balances the needs and expectations of
shippers and intermediaries, Verstrepen said.
At one time, the EC would approve collaborative agreements before they
were launched, said Verstrepen. Today, however, companies can move forward on partnerships without government approval, and the EC will intervene only when it believes legal boundaries have been violated, he added.
“The fact that the EC is sponsoring CO3, and that the legal framework is
a pivotal building block [of] it, can be considered an informal encouragement of Europe for what we do,” Verstrepen said in an e-mail.
For more information about CO3, go to www.co3-project.eu. ;
go figure …
702
The number of miles a heavy-duty truck
could travel on $500 worth of diesel fuel as
of the end of 2012. In 2002, that same dollar amount could take a truck 2,236 miles.
SOURCE: RSE CONSULTING
Interroll buys Portec
Group
The Interroll Group, a Switzerland-based maker of material handling
equipment, has acquired Portec Group
International Inc., a Cañon City, Colo.-based domestic manufacturer of conveyor belt curves. Specific terms of the
all-cash transaction were not disclosed.
The transaction was expected to
close on July 1, before this issue went
to press.
Portec, which has been making conveyor belt curve equipment since 1957,
will benefit from being integrated
into Interroll’s global distribution network, Interroll said. At the same time,
Portec’s U.S. reach will enable Interroll
to expand its markets for its own products and services, Interroll said.
Besides producing belt curve systems, Portec is active in the replacement aftermarket as a supplier of belts
mostly used in systems operated by
third-party logistics service providers.
Portec generated about $20 million
in revenue last year. It is owned by
Incline Equity Partners, a Pittsburgh-based investment firm. ;
ground breakers
CenterPoint Properties signed a long-term lease with
logistics specialist Veterans Distribution of Chicago for a
295,393-square-foot facility in Hillside, Ill. … UPS has
opened a new healthcare facility in Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Province, China, a move that represents an expansion of
the company’s Asia healthcare distribution network. …
Port Logistics Group, a provider of gateway logistics
services, has opened two new facilities that add more
than 1. 1 million square feet of warehouse space at its
City of Industry, Calif., Retail Distribution Campus.
