Just two months after announcing it was exploring strategic alternatives, including selling off one or more of its business units but keeping its LTL services intact, the company pulled this option off the table due to the effects of the coronavirus on markets. XPO had been looking at divestiture after a two-year, $8 billion acquisition spree.
3PL GlobalTranz Enterprises has acquired Cerasis, a provider of managed transportation and third-party multimodal logistics services, marking its 11th acquisition since January 2017. Cerasis has a managed transportation client base that uses its 3PL/4PL service offerings and technology solutions, including TMS.
Warehouse and fulfillment center giant Prologis will acquire rival Liberty Property Trust in an all-stock merger valued at $12.68 billion, the companies announced, greatly expanding Prologis’ U.S. logistics holdings as demand continues to ramp up. This is in addition to Prologis’ 2018 acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust for $8.4 billion.
Rent the Runway is back up and running after a supply chain and inventory issue occurred the first week of October. The subscription company is once again accepting new subscribers a week ahead of the date it had originally planned. Here is a statement from Rent the Runway about how it handled everything.
Amazon and Home Depot will become tenants of a new state-of-the-art, three-story warehouse and fulfillment center in Seattle from logistics giant Prologis, part of the huge push to fulfill ecommerce within a day in major urban markets, according to the Wall Street Journal. Three other such buildings are going up in New York City.
Despite public pronouncements from FedEx Chairman and CEO Fred Smith that he is unconcerned about Amazon as a logistics competitor, the company used that term in its recently released annual report for the first time in connection with the ecommerce giant. Further actions by Amazon will “reduce our revenue” FedEx stated.
Walmart announced plans to invest $1.2 billion into its China business to beat out competition. The company plans to invest the money into distribution centers over the next 20 years with a focus on grocery delivery.
The largest two-story fulfillment center in the country will be under construction later this year in the Bronx, NY, with a planned 2021 opening, enabling ecommerce tenants to service the New York metro market with same-day delivery. It will total 969,000 square feet, including 595,000 square feet of fulfillment space.
In order for blockchain to succeed on a global scale in the transportation of goods, an open source standard will be required, according to a FedEx executive who heads up a blockchain alliance working toward that goal. The first standard of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance, on shipment location tracking, was published in March.
Amazon’s moves into logistics and fulfillment over the past few years have been well-documented, with FedEx and UPS downplaying the threat and Amazon saying it just wants to address its capacity shortfalls. Until now, that is, when Amazon added “transportation and logistics services” to the long list of competitive sectors in its 2018 10k filing.