Curtis J. Foltz, who as executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) for the past six years presided over perhaps the most successful period in GPA's history, will step down at the end of its fiscal year on June 30, GPA said today.
Foltz will be succeeded by Griff Lynch, GPA's chief operating officer. Foltz had been COO for six years before assuming his current post in 2010.
Foltz will serve as a consultant to GPA for one year after his departure, it said.
Foltz's departure had been rumored for months. In July 2015, when asked to comment on rumors of his possible retirement, Foltz said in an e-mail that the thought "hasn't even entered my mind. Everything is great here with GPA, the team and my board of directors."
In a phone interview, Foltz said he arrived at the decision after discussing the matter over the holidays with his wife. Both felt that after 12 years at GPA, it was time for him to move on. Foltz said the GPA board was "surprised" by his decision when they were informed in early January. He said the scope of the impending consulting arrangement has yet to be defined.
Foltz said he plans to work another 10 to 15 years and will remain in the maritime industry. "I've been in global shipping for 33-plus years, and it's hard to imagine me doing anything else," he said.
Barring any calamity over the next five months, Foltz will depart with the GPA, and especially the Port of Savannah, the country's fourth-busiest containerport, in good shape. In late January, GPA reported that calendar year 2015 volumes handled at Savannah hit an all-time high of 3.73 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), an 11.7-percent increase from 2014 levels. The gains were fueled by increased traffic demand in the Southeast, Savannah's prowess as a logistics hub, and the diversion of cargo from West Coast ports, as heightened labor-management tensions there in late 2014-15 led many Beneficial Cargo Owners (BCOs) to shift traffic to East and Gulf coast ports to avoid potential delays. GPA has said it retained a portion of diverted cargoes, but has never specified how much.
Total tonnage across all GPA terminals reached a record 31.48 million tons in 2015, a 3.6-percent increase from the prior year. Container tonnage grew 4 percent, while bulk and breakbulk cargo handled at the Port of Brunswick, also operated by GPA, rose 2.2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.
In its 2015 fiscal year, Savannah handled an all-time record 3.66 million TEUs, a 17-percent increase from FY 2014 levels. The 2014 fiscal year was the first time Savannah's container volume exceeded 3 million TEUs.
During Foltz's tenure, Georgia began positioning itself as a player in the fast-growing inland-port segment, where ports are connected with rail lines to provide service between interior U.S. markets and port facilities. In 2013, the state opened an inland port in Cordele, located 65 miles south of Macon and 103 miles north of the Florida state line. Last year, an agreement was finalized to build a similar complex in Chatsworth, located in northwest Georgia, to link Savannah to markets in north Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and parts of Kentucky. The facility, to be called the "Appalachian Regional Port," will operate in conjunction with CSX Transportation, the Jacksonville-based rail giant, which will provide direct access. It is expected to open in 2018 with an annual capacity of 50,000 containers.
State officials have set a goal of developing the largest intermodal complex in the eastern third of the U.S.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.