Material handling solutions provider Daifuku North
America Holding Co. will move its headquarters next
year from Farmington Hills, Mich., to nearby Novi, Mich.
… Mallory Alexander International Logistics has opened
an office in Houston as part of an ongoing expansion. …
Inther Logistics Engineering BV
and SRD Maschinenbau GmbH
have sold their first automated document applicator to the
warehouse of hardware store
Bauhaus in Krefeld, Germany.
… Business Intelligence Group
LLC has acquired KFS Inc., a nonasset-based logistics
company with operations in Fort Worth, Dallas, and
El Paso, Texas. The firm will operate under the brand
B.I.G. Logistics. … Fortna continues its global expansion with the opening of its first Canadian office, in
Toronto. … Hannibal Industries Inc. has launched its
redesigned website to better serve its pallet rack and
steel tube distributors and partners. … Ametek Inc. has
donated $25,000 to a scholarship fund created for the
Ohio State University’s College of Engineering and the
Max M. Fisher College of Business in honor of the late
Helmut Friedlaender, who served on Ametek’s board of
directors for more than 50 years. … CRST International
Inc. has acquired privately held Gardner Trucking Inc.,
headquartered in Ontario, Calif. … APL Logistics Ltd.
has set up APL Logistics Oman, a new joint venture
company with Arab Global Logistics LLC, to spearhead
efforts to develop Oman as a regional logistics hub to
serve local and international customers in the Middle
East and East Africa. … Paragon Software Systems Inc.,
a vehicle routing and scheduling optimization solutions
provider, experienced strong growth in the first half of
2016, with a 70-percent increase in the number of organizations that have purchased its software compared
with the same period last year, and with 50 percent
of its sales revenue coming from new customers. …
Toyota Material Handling North America (TMHNA) has
announced the TMHNA University Research Program, a
new sponsored research program created to drive the
next generation of technology for the entire supply
chain, logistics, and material handling industry. …
Akro-Mils has launched a new image library on its website
located at www.akro-mils.com. … Logistics Plus Inc. has
celebrated its 20th anniversary.
short takes
INTHER
GPA’s rail expansion project will
take aim at West Coast port share
The Georgia Ports Authority’s (GPA) ambitious four-year
plan to expand containerized on-dock rail service to the
Midwest and Ohio Valley is an effort to grab market share
from West Coast ports struggling with congestion-driven
service issues, the GPA’s executive director said.
The $128 million “Mid-American Arc” project, so named
because it will establish an arc of coverage across Memphis,
Tenn., Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, and the Ohio Valley,
will link the two rail yards at Savannah’s Garden City intermodal terminal, creating enough traffic density to allow
10,000-foot-long unit trains to be built at the terminal.
The additional infrastructure will make it attractive for
Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX Corp. and Norfolk, Va.-based
Norfolk Southern Corp., both of which serve Savannah, to
run unit trains in heretofore untapped markets to and from
the Georgia port, said Griff Lynch, who took over as GPA’s
executive director on June 30, succeeding the retiring Curtis
J. Foltz.
The project is expected to be completed by 2020, said
GPA, which runs the Port of Savannah, the country’s
fourth-busiest containerport, and the Port of Brunswick,
which handles roll-on/roll-off and breakbulk traffic. GPA
announced the project in late September.
A unit train carries the same commodity from the same
origin to the same destination, without the cars being split
up or stored en route. According to GPA, 25 trains each
week serve the Mid-American Arc locations. However,
Chicago and the Ohio Valley do not receive unit train ser-
vice, while Savannah’s share is 40 percent at Atlanta and
just 23 percent at Memphis—levels Lynch has vowed to
boost. “We currently don’t have the ability to fully build
a unit train to Memphis,” said Lynch, intimating that the
project will change the calculus. The project represents “a
complete overhaul of our system,” he said.
go figure …
22 million
The number of wearable scanners for fulfillment
work projected to be sold globally by 2021, up
from 7 million today.
SOURCE: ABI RESEARCH
