The two warehouses will be constructed in Midlands and East London. The state-of-the-art warehouses are anticipated to remove one million road miles per year, media reports said. This points to the fact that it is 40 times around the world, or 8,547 times around the M25.

For that reason, the logistics operation project has generated a lot of interest. In addition, the warehouse capacity will increase by more than 50 percent. Jim Hartshorne, Managing Director, Retail & Consumer & Ireland, DHL Supply Chain, told the media, “We are delighted to be extending our global partnership with Mars in the construction and management of these sites. Our shared environmental commitments are supported by this investment and we are creating long term, exciting jobs in both of these communities. This project will be the foundation of the UK logistics chain for Mars for many years to come and we are incredibly proud to be selected to lead in this project.”

The two purpose-built-ports  ‘East Midlands Gateway’ and ‘London Thames Gateway’ will commence operations in 2021 and 2023. The two ports will have a combined square footage of more than a million feet. It is reported that the ports will also have high bay facilities with innovative automated pallet storage.

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The analysis even found that the regional cargo carriers led by Emirates Airline are resilient to early problems caused by the pandemic.

Logistics companies and the industry at large will further strengthen the Middle Eastern economies. DHL, for example, is playing a significant role in supporting Saudi Vision 2030 and Kuwait Vision 2035. Moustafa Elbanhawi, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding, Arab Cluster, told International Finance, “By consolidating the expertise and services we have in the sub-region, we are increasing the efficiency of our operations and developing an agile functional approach that will sharpen our focus on providing the full spectrum of logistics services to our customers. This team also allows us to create more synergies in collaborating with our sister companies in the Deutsche Post DHL Group network, including DHL Express and DHL Supply Chain.”

Positively, global logistics leader UPS and the American University of Sharjah (AUM) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop initiatives in capacity building and knowledge sharing that will support the future of female AUS students and alumni across sectors. Some of those sectors include supply chain management, ecommerce, customs and global trade.

The post The UAE’s logistics is enabling global communities wrestle pandemic appeared first on International Finance.

Now, regional shipments can be moved from Indonesia to other Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, or vice versa, by using DHL’s multimodal services which involve both air and road freight, instead of only air freight or ocean freight.

The service, which is called AsiaConnect, was launched by DHL in the continent in 2011. It connects Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and China through its cross-border network.

Vincent Yong, President Director, DHL Global Forwarding Indonesia told the media, “Businesses moving goods out of Indonesia now have a strong viable alternative to traditional air and ocean freight. With DHL AsiaConnect, we have a robust scheduled road network across Indonesia’s key ASEAN trading markets.”

According to Vincent Yong, adding Indonesia to the service portfolio gives customers a new option for multimodal freight service, which is up to 35 percent cheaper and reduces carbon emissions by up to 54 percent compared to airfreight.

He further stated that multimodal services are 65 percent faster as compared to ocean freight, providing the perfect middle-ground for customers who want more flexibility.

According to DHL, more than 50 percent of Indonesia’s trade flows are regional, with the majority of its imports and exports involves trading partners in other Southeast Asian countries.

Recently, DHL Global Forwarding also announced that it will increase its investments in Indonesia. The company plans to develop more bonded logistics centres in the country to support as well as improve its operations.

Currently, DHL Global Forwarding has two logistics centres in Indonesia, out of which two are in Jakarta, while the others are in Medan, Surabaya, Balikpapan, and Sorong.

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Geoff Walsh, country manager at DHL in the UAE told the media that, “It is our goal at DHL Express to support our customers in reaching their business goals by tailoring our services to the needs of their business. As a prerequisite, we have been investing heavily in our international network.”

He added, “The annual price adjustment allows us to invest in our infrastructure, enabling us to utilise innovative technologies and individual delivery processes to ensure best-in-class customer solutions.”

Geoff Walsh also pointed out that as a result of increasing demand for logistic services in the e-commerce market, DHL Express has invested substantially in acquiring new aircraft and in developing a global hub and gateway network.

Earlier this year, DHL announced its plan to expand in the UAE with the introduction of a new facility in EZDubai. The new 3,200 square metre DHL facility will handle rising B2C exports in Dubai South. The announcement of the new facility was also made keeping in mind the rising logistic demand from the e-commerce market.

DHL also launched Saloodo in the Middle East, a freight platform which maps all transport processes digitally, including shipment tracking, freight document management, invoicing and payment. The platform will connect shippers and transport providers for road freight needs within the UAE.

Prior to its launch in the UAE, Saloodo was available only in Europe.

The post DHL announces price hike in UAE, to be effective from 2020 appeared first on International Finance.

Leading the pack in terms of the use of technology is German logistics company, DHL Deutsche Post. Leveraging investment in research and development, DHL has become a frontrunner in introducing various innovations such as its most recent digital twin warehouse in Singapore. This smart warehouse solution that combines IoT with data analytics is the first such solution in Asia Pacific and has been implemented for Swiss-based food packaging and processing company, Tetra Pak.

In an exclusive interview with International Finance, the company tells us about its other recent technological innovations in Asia, its plans for the continent, challenges for the industry, and how DHL plans to overcome them.

IF: DHL recently implemented its smart warehouse in Singapore. How many such warehouses could we expect in the next one to two years in Asia? Which specific countries come under the plan? And with which companies is DHL working?

DHL: We are unable to comment on the specific instances.   However, as thought leaders in the logistics industry, DHL structurally invests in trend research and solution development to address today and tomorrow’s logistics challenges.  The smart warehouse in Singapore is one of such use cases that came out of our innovation pursuits.

At DHL, we believe in customer-centric innovation. Our Asia Pacific Innovation Center (APIC), based in Singapore (First innovation centre outside of Europe) specialises in facilitating the quick adoption of solutions, where they are scaled up for customers, different countries, sectors and business units within DHL. The centre also hosts the DHL Advanced Analytics lab that provides advanced data analytics solutions to DHL business units and their customers.

IF: Are there any other verticals where you are using or plan to use IoT, AI, or other latest technologies?

DHL: We are confident that we can be an active driver of digitisation and digitalisation in our industry to ultimately seize its opportunities because of our long-standing industry position and size. We are exploring different arenas with our partners and customers.

We are also keeping tabs on key trends and developing solutions to enhance our offerings to our customers. For instance we have drone delivery. Here, we have, collaborated with EHang, one of the world’s leading intelligent autonomous aerial vehicle company, to jointly launch a fully automated and intelligent smart drone delivery solution to tackle the last-mile delivery challenges in the urban areas of China.

Apart from drones, electric vehicles too are an important part of our innovation. As part of our goal to achieve zero logistics-related carbon emissions by 2050, we have been deploying electric vehicles in our fleet across the region. These include the use of electric vans and cars such as in China and Korea and e-bikes and cubicycles such as in Malaysia and Taiwan. We are also working with Japanese logistics provider, Yamato through StreetScooter, a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL Group to deploy electric vehicles in Japan.

We also have Resilience 360, an innovative innovative supply chain risk management platform that provides businesses with the information they need to be used for supply chain visualisation, trade compliance and to help provide near real time monitoring of incidents that have the capabilities to disrupt supply chains.

With regard to India we launched DHL SmarTrucking, an innovative trucking solution that leverages Internet of Things (IoT) technology and data-driven insights for route optimisation. This reduces transit times by up to 50 percent compared to the traditional trucking industry, and provides over 95 percent reliability with ease of use, end-to-end consignment visibility, temperature-controlled capabilities and real-time tracking

In addition, we published a new trend report looking at the impact of digital twins on every part of the value chain, their potential to improve the performance and efficiency of logistics processes, and the new demands that digital twin enabled businesses will place on supply chains and logistics activities.  We have since successfully launched our customer, Tetra Pak’s first smart warehouse in the region.

DHL has also taken solid steps to illustrate how the logistics sector could embrace artificial intelligence. We are working with our customers to explore how AI can be integrated in their operations to maximise productivity. In collaboration with IBM, DHL has released a report that evaluates the potential of AI in logistics and exposes how it can be best applied to transform the industry, giving rise to a new class of intelligent logistics assets and operational paradigms.

IF: What are the latest technologies or products that DHL has introduced or plans to introduce in Asia over the next few years?

DHL: DHL regards innovation as an important aspect of our business, to drive efficiency and customer satisfaction. At our innovation centres in Singapore and Germany, we are looking at proof-of-concepts with our customers, and conducting trials. Most of these are work-in-progress but we will be able to share more when these ideas are commercialised.

IF: What are your future plans for Asia?

DHL: As the leading global brand in the logistics industry, the DHL family of divisions offers an unrivalled portfolio of logistics services ranging from national and international parcel delivery, e-commerce shipping and fulfillment solutions, international express, road, rail, air and ocean transport to industrial supply chain management. With about 380,000 employees in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide, and more than 84,000 employees in Asia Pacific, DHL connects people and businesses securely and reliably, enabling global trade flows.

We are the global market leader in the international express market, contract logistics and air freight, among the top two leading players in ocean freight services, and one of Europe’s leading road freight forwarders. Asia represents more than 17 percent of our global revenue in FY 2018 (approximately EUR 11 billion) and remains an important market for us to invest in. We will continue to look into opportunities to enhance our service offerings to our customers.

IF: What impact is the US-China trade tension having on this market?

DHL: We observe economic developments around the world very closely and we are aware that the general economic climate is less favourable. Findings from DHL Global Trade Barometer, issued in June 2019 allude to that. It indicates a slight contraction of worldwide trade for the next three months, with growth weakening in key drivers of the world economy. Most macroeconomic and labour market indicators, point to a cooling of US growth and financial market sentiment that has been hurt by trade tensions.

IF: What is the future potential for the Asian logistics market? What are the challenges for growth and how do you plan to overcome them?

DHL: According to the Asian Development Bank, Asia is forecast to maintain strong but moderating growth: the regional gross domestic product (GDP) is forecast to expand by 5.7 percent in 2019, and by 5.6 percent in 2020.

While our broad portfolio and extensive global network do make us more resilient to these uncertainties, as a global logistics provider, we are especially aware of the importance of free trade and open borders, and remain a strong supporter of such. We are of the view that the growth and prosperity realised by globalisation must not be jeopardised by protectionist and nationalist activities. We are focused on our core business, and will continue to invest in quality services, innovations and infrastructure to meet our customers’ needs.

While we are aware that these external factors such as the ongoing trade tensions and geopolitical uncertainties are not within our control, we remain optimistic that there are positive trends and developments that we can still count on, to fuel the economy and for logistics to play a role.

Most importantly, we can expect continued robust domestic demand and strong foreign investment flows and in various economies, to enable trade flows. Apart from this, Asian economies are also looking to increase bilateral and multilateral Free Trade Zone Agreements (FTAs) either within their own sub-region bloc, including with major trade partners such as Japan, India, and China. Regional economic blocs like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are continuing to look at ways to lower trade barriers within its region, to boost economic integration.

Also, while Asia has been spending more on infrastructure (the road networks for the region has been growing at about 5 percent annually – a much faster rate than in other developing nations), there is room for more to be done, as the region takes on rapid economic growth. With this, we expect global cross border B2C e-commerce industry will continue to grow, and are expected to be worth $1 trillion by 2021. With this, we can expect logistics to play a key role in cross border trade.

[1] Accenture and AliResearch

The post IF EXCLUSIVE: DHL using ‘smart’ tech for logistics excellence appeared first on International Finance.

IFM Correspondent

March 24, 2016: Freight company DHL beat Google and SAP to be the best company to work in Asia under the MNC category, according to a survey by Great Place to Work, which conducts research on the characteristics of great workplaces.

Australia-based tech company Atlassian topped the list of large companies. In the category of small and medium enterprises, the list was led by the Singapore office of US-based Salesforce.

The survey defines a firm as a large company if it has more than 500 employees. Those employing 50-500 persons are categorised as medium and small enterprises.

Omnicom, Google, EMC and Marriott were the others in the top five in the multinational category while SAP was in the top 10. Oz-based Mecca Brands, Indian IT company RMSI Private, the Korea Airports Corporation and Australian retailer kikki.K found a place among the top five in the list of the large workplaces.

“Employees at the best workplaces connect the treatment they experience with their plans to stay. For employees in Asia, factors like equal treatment regardless of job level and fair promotions are closely associated with their willingness to give extra to get the job done,” says Prasenjit Bhattacharya, CEO, Great Place to Work Institute, India.

Australian companies make up one-third of the list this year, followed by India with a 21% representation. Singapore contributed 6% of the winning companies.

As far as industry divide is concerned, 22% were technology companies while financial services and insurance came second with 18%. Hospitality industry represented 5% of the list.

The survey covered 1,064 companies that employ 1.8 million employees across nine countries. The results are based on a Trust Index survey completed by employees, as well as a ‘culture audit’ that analysed companies’ human resource practices and policies. The countries that participated in the survey are Australia, China, India, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.

Top 5 MNCs

Top 5 large companies

Top 5 SMEs

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