Warehousing: Page 313

Food Safety Coalition Petitions USDA Seeks Overhaul Of Food Labels

The Safe Food Coalition has requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) add requirements for a SHI label for all raw or partially cooked siluriformes fish, including catfish products.

The revised rules should continue to require that labels provide information about the potential risk of pathogenic contamination of USDA products. They should further require that labels provide more specific information about safe handling practices for meat, poultry and catfish products.

Ocean Ports & Carriers

Teamsters Clash With Coastal Ports Over Driver Classification

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

At issue is whether owner-operators are simply small businesses working by choice as contractors for trucking companies, or whether the drivers are “misclassified” as contractors and are actually employees.

The Teamsters launch a concerted campaign to pressure trucking companies on the issue in California, where a week-long series of job actions involving drayage companies that serve the ports, intermodal rail yards and warehouses began Wednesday.

DHL Plans To Expand Robots In Warehouse Following Successful Test

Seeing as the pickers are only human, DHL and the French robotics company Effidence are looking for a better way — for both efficiency and the employees.

EFFiBot sits on four heavy-duty all-terrain wheels, its body is mainly an open wagon-like bay that holds upwards of 650 pounds. Sensors on the front help EFFiBot follow the picker throughout the warehouse as he or she finds packages on the shelves and places them on the robot to carry.

iContainers Freight Delivery Service Raises $6.7 Million In Growth Capital

iContainers seeks to take the port digital and bring transparency to an otherwise complex, cumbersome, and costly process involving customs agents, consultants, and copious paperwork.

iContainers is an early market mover in what it calls door-to-door servicing. Using the company’s platform, users can schedule a warehouse pickup and have goods delivered directly to another warehouse in over 1,200 destinations.

CAI International Inc. Acquires Hybrid Logistics Inc. And General Transportation Services Inc. For $12 Million

Robert Thompson, a co-founder and prior shareholder of Hybrid and General Transportation, will be president of the companies.

CAI International, Inc., a transportation finance and logistics companies, announced the acquisition of Hybrid Logistics, Inc. and its affiliate company, General Transportation Services, Inc. for a combined purchase price of $12 million.

Walmart Partners With Uber, Lyft And Deliv On Last-Mile Grocery Delivery Tests

Wal-Mart will start with tests of grocery delivery through Uber in Phoenix, Ariz., and Lyft in Denver, Colo., which it expects to start within the next two weeks.

Walmart will start with tests of grocery delivery through Uber in Phoenix, Ariz., and Lyft in Denver, Colo., which it expects to start within the next two weeks. This is in addition to a Sam’s Club pilot that started in March with Deliv involving delivery of general merchandise and grocery for business members in Miami, Fla.

Walmart Tests Drones In Distribution And Fulfillment Centers

The drone is fully automated, but was manually controlled during the demonstration as it flew up and down warehouse shelves, captured images and determined whether products were in the right place in the distribution center.

Checking inventory is done by workers who have to use lifts and are harnessed in for safety as they scan products throughout the warehouse. The switch to drones could cut the time it takes to check the inventory throughout a facility that spans roughly 1.2 million square feet, or the equivalent of 26 football fields, from one month to one day.

Schneider Acquires Watkins & Shepard and Lodesco

Schneider Logistics

Both acquisitions complement the growing Final Mile+ service from Schneider, which provides customized home, commercial and retail delivery with white-glove service.

Schneider is now the nation’s leading first-to-final-mile-delivery provider of LTL, truckload and logistics for high-value home furnishings and over-dimensional goods.

Ocean Ports & Carriers

United Arab Shipping Company Seeks Merger With Hapag-Lloyd

UASC, which is owned by Gulf governments, said the merger talks were discussed at an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders on Thursday at the company's office in Dubai.

If a deal is reached, it will create a group with an estimated combined enterprise value of around seven billion to eight billion euros ($7.8 billion to $8.9 billion).

Cargill To Acquire Five Star Custom Foods

Adding Five Star Custom Foods to the Cargill family will enhance the company’s existing cooked protein capabilities, optimize supply chain efficiencies and provide innovation opportunities.

The acquisition includes both of the Five Star Custom Foods facilities in Fort Worth and Nashville, Tenn.

Grocery Delivery Startups Lead Food Industry in Raising Capital

Grocery delivery companies globally raised $429 million so far this year, according to data from CB Insights. Meal delivery companies raised $352 million during the same period.

The growing fleet of motorbike couriers on Chinese roads is the latest challenge to long-established but struggling Western companies such as McDonald’s Corp. and Yum Brands Inc., which owns KFC and Pizza Hut outlets.

Oil Price Reaches 7-Month High

Oil prices have rallied in recent weeks as a string of outages, due in part to wildfires in Canada and unrest in Nigeria and Libya, knocked out nearly 4 million barrels per day of production.

Above $50 a barrel, oil was seen by many market players as breaching a psychological barrier that could lead producers, particularly among U.S. shale companies, to revive operations scrapped in recent years.

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