Contract Logistics (SCM)

Retail ecommerce increased by 75% in 2020 in Canada and is on track to expand by another 12% in 2021, according to eMarketer. This year, ecommerce will account for 13.4% of the country’s retail sales—up from just 6.9% in 2019, before the pandemic shifted consumer behavior over to buying more...

Retailers like H&M can’t meet demand because of delivery delays, Nike cut its sales forecasts after COVID-19 triggered factory closures and Bed Bath & Beyond has faced ongoing shipping challenges. These are just a few of the high-profile supply chain woes that organizations are facing in 2021, and Bloomberg says...

When sales forecasts are accurate, companies know they’ll have enough product supply to meet customer demand for those goods. And even if there’s an imbalance, good forecasts allow organizations to course-correct before a real problem emerges. When forecasts are wrong, or when organizations don’t take the time to plan them...

The transportation environment has remained challenging through much of 2021, with everything from ocean container shortages to port congestion to tight trucking capacity making life difficult for companies shipping outbound freight and receiving inbound goods. The situation may not ease much during the fourth quarter of the year, when the...

In May, a major Chinese port shut down its operations for 20-days due to a COVID-19 outbreak among its dock workers. That in turn caused an even longer aftershock. Situated about 50 miles north of Hong Kong, the Port of Yantian handles enough goods to fill 36,000, 20-foot tractor trailers...

October Update Brazil's Petrobras sees fuel demand that could affect future logistics prices Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras said October 18th, it has received "atypical demand" for fuel supplies in November that surpasses its production capacity. The company has been operating its refineries with a capacity factor of 90% in...

Clarks® Shoes’ story began almost 200 years ago, when Cyrus and James Clark made a slipper from sheepskin off-cuts. Groundbreaking at the time, this combination of invention and craftsmanship has remained at the heart of the company’s mission ever since. Even today, every pair of Clarks’ shoes begins with advanced...

Following a global pause in cruise operations last March, cruise lines resumed sailing in parts of Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific by midyear. There were over 200 sailings through the end of the year, with the success of these trips demonstrating that the “new protocols are working as designed—to...

Companies prepare for the summer shipping season in different ways depending on current customer demands, the transportation environment, and other outside factors. With the pandemic continuing to create complexities for supply chains around the globe—from container shortages to port congestion to high consumer demand—Home Depot is one organization that’s taking...

Defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, resilience has become a core mission for companies across most industries right now. After putting businesses through a battery of strategic-resilience tests in 2020, the pandemic continues to place new pressures on many organizations in 2021. “The global pandemic has put...