Real estate manager Imperial Equities donates warehouse space for food bank operations—Covid-19 roundup for April 21

Industrial real estate manager Imperial Equities Inc. has donated 10,000 square feet of warehouse space to ensure that the Canadian nonprofit Edmonton's Food Bank has sufficient storage space to handle demand surges through the Covid-19 crisis.

The donation is significant because the pandemic has put extra demands on strained distribution centers to accommodate new requirements for safe operations. For example, given the increased need for social distancing, Edmonton’s Food Bank now requires more space than usual for equipment storage and to create space to ensure its work areas allow for adequate distance between staff, volunteers, donors, and clients to move on site.

The donated space, with a market value of $60,000, will be made available at zero cost to the Food Bank for six months. The Food Bank will be using the new space as storage, while continuing to operate its current service location for its operations providing food to about 25,000 people through its hamper programs every month, including about 40% who are children under the age of 18.

"In order to space out some of our operations and to create physical distancing in our current warehouses, we want to move some items to a different warehouse on a temporary basis. These surplus items include boxes, bins, Candy Cane Lane support material, etc.,” Marjorie Bencz, Food Bank executive director, said in a release.

And in other examples of the logistics industry dedicating its assets to the coronavirus fight:

• Trucking, intermodal, and logistics services company Schneider is collaborating with supply chain visibility platform Overhaul in a bid to help shippers contain risk and minimize disruptions in their supply chains during the coronavirus pandemic. Schneider’s brokerage division, Schneider Transportation Management, will use input from Overhaul, which aggregates data from multiple streams and devices to provide insights and proactive supply chain commands to shippers.
• Shawmut Corp., a textile manufacturer based in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, is redirecting the equipment and labor in its manufacturing plants to supply medical gowns as personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shawmut plans to produce as many as 2.5 million medical gowns per week (both through materials and actual gown creation) for the next several months, by leveraging its facilities in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Michigan, as well as Tijuana, Mexico.
• On-demand shipping tech startup Frayt Inc. is partnering with 21 Kroger Marketplace stores in the greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and Dayton areas to provide same-day delivery of large outdoor items including patio dining sets, grills, and mulch. The arrangement comes as Covid-19 restrictions means that many retailers are closed, so Frayt is pivoting its typical business-to-business service model to provide opportunities that help connect retailers to consumers, the firm said. In the case of Kroger, guests can still shop inside the store, but in many cases retailers can only provide delivery behind their closed doors.

To see further coverage of the coronavirus crisis and how it's affecting the logistics industry, check out our Covid-19 landing page. And click here for our compilation of virus-focused websites and resource pages from around the supply chain sector.