Supply chain technology provider Veraction LLC said Tuesday it has launched an enhanced version of its transportation spend management tool, adding deeper visibility and spending control by leveraging the freight and parcel audit process.
Memphis, Tenn.-based Veraction launched the improved platform as part of its Transportation Spend Intelligence (TSI) suite, including the TSI Insights and TSI Variance Analysis tools in its cloud-based Total TSM platform.
The enhanced solutions offer a visualization of transportation spending across modes, carriers, geographies, or businesses, according to Veraction. With the new release, customers can use that data to pinpoint where and why their spending is changing, so they can take action, the company said.
"In today's environment, knowing 'what happened' is important, but not enough. Customers need to know why they had positive or negative variance in their spending so they can quickly correct a problem or exploit an opportunity," Vardu Parthasarathi, Veraction's product manager for transportation spend intelligence, said in a statement. "Up until TSI, customers have had to dedicate significant resources and time on cost-reduction analysis and KPI calculation. Our analytics solutions now deliver this in seconds, and with mouse clicks instead of spreadsheets."
The move delivers on its August announcement of a fleet renewal plan that will allow the company to proceed on its path to decarbonization, according to a statement from Anda Cristescu, Head of Chartering & Newbuilding at Maersk.
The first vessels will be delivered in 2028, and the last delivery will take place in 2030, enabling a total capacity to haul 300,000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) using lower emissions fuel. The new vessels will be built in sizes from 9,000 to 17,000 TEU each, allowing them to fill various roles and functions within the company’s future network.
In the meantime, the company will also proceed with its plan to charter a range of methanol and liquified gas dual-fuel vessels totaling 500,000 TEU capacity, replacing existing capacity. Maersk has now finalized these charter contracts across several tonnage providers, the company said.
The shipyards now contracted to build the vessels are: Yangzijiang Shipbuilding and New Times Shipbuilding—both in China—and Hanwha Ocean in South Korea.
Asia Pacific origin markets are continuing to contribute an outsize share of worldwide air cargo growth this year, generating more than half (56%) of the global +12% year-on-year (YoY) increase in tonnages in the first 10 months of 2024, according to an analysis by WorldACD Market Data.
The region’s strong contribution this year means Asia Pacific’s share of worldwide outbound tonnages overall has risen two percentage points to 41% from 39% last year, well ahead of Europe on 24%, Central & South America on 14%, Middle East & South Asia (MESA) with 9% of global volumes, North America’s 8%, and Africa’s 4%.
Not only does the Asia Pacific region have the largest market share, but it also has the fastest growth, Netherlands-based WorldACD said. After origin Asia Pacific with its 56% share of global tonnage growth this year, Europe came in as the second origin region accounting for a much lower 17% of global tonnage growth. That was followed closely by the MESA region, which contributed 14% of outbound tonnage growth this year despite its small size, bolstered by traffic shifting to air this year due to continuing disruptions to the region’s ocean freight markets caused by violence in the vital Red Sea corridor to the Suez Canal.
The types of freight that are driving Asia Pacific dominance in air freight exports begin with “general cargo” contributing almost two thirds (64%) of this year’s growth, boosted by large volumes of e-commerce traffic flying consolidated as general cargo. After that, “special cargo” generated 36%, with 80% of that portion consisting of the vulnerables/high-tech product category.
Among the top 5 individual airport or city origin growth markets, the world’s busiest air cargo gateway Hong Kong also remained the biggest single generator of YoY outbound growth in October, as it has for much of this year. Hong Kong’s +15% YoY tonnage increase generated around twice the growth in absolute chargeable weight of second-placed Miami, even though the latter had recorded +31% YoY growth compared with its tonnages in October last year. Dubai was the third-biggest outbound growth market, thanks to its +45% YoY increase in October, closely followed by Shanghai and Tokyo.
And on the inverse side of the that trendline, the top 5 YoY decreases in inbound tonnages were recorded in Teheran, Beirut, Beijing, Dhaka, and Zaragoza. Notably, Teheran’s and Beirut’s inbound tonnages almost completely wiped out as most commercial flights to and from Iran and Lebanon were suspended last month amid Middle East violence; tonnages at both airports were down by -96%, YoY, in October. Other location that saw steep declines included Dhaka, Beirut and Zaragoza – affected by political unrest, conflict, and flooding, respectively –followed by China’s Qingdao and Mexico’s Guadalajara.
Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
Cowan is a dedicated contract carrier that also provides brokerage, drayage, and warehousing services. The company operates approximately 1,800 trucks and 7,500 trailers across more than 40 locations throughout the Eastern and Mid-Atlantic regions, serving the retail and consumer goods, food and beverage products, industrials, and building materials sectors.
After the deal, Schneider will operate over 8,400 tractors in its dedicated arm – approximately 70% of its total Truckload fleet – cementing its place as one of the largest dedicated providers in the transportation industry, Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Schneider said.
The latest move follows earlier acquisitions by Schneider of the dedicated contract carriers Midwest Logistics Systems and M&M Transport Services LLC in 2023.
The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."