Birmingham, UK: Around 500 Sainsbury’s lorry drivers based in Essex and Birmingham are being balloted for strike action. The dispute centres on the drivers losing certain employee benefits when their jobs transfer to Wincanton at the end of April. The workers, members of the Unite union, are currently employed directly by Sainsbury’s. The transfer to …
Fraserburgh, Scotland: David Duguid, Banff and Buchan MP, is backing Gray & Adams’ call for a law change to allow wider refrigerated trailers in the UK. Gray & Adams has developed new corner caps for its latest trailers but their use exceeds the 2.6m overall refrigerated trailer width limit. There is no change in the …
Kansas City, Missouri, USA: Americold plans its first cold store with Canadian Pacific Kansas City, investing $127m in the 335,000 square foot site in Kansas City, Missouri. George Chappelle, chief executive, Americold, said: “Combining our cold storage capabilities with CPKC’s extensive rail network enables Americold to deliver a differentiated offering to support more customers across …
London, UK: Toyota Material Handling Europe is working with Gideon, a Zagreb-based technology company offering software for localisation and control of autonomous mobile robots. The move is aimed at meeting the growing demand for simple autonomous solutions with self-navigating vehicles and an easy user-interface. “By combining Gideon technology with its own vehicles, Toyota Material Handling …
Rwamagana, Rwanda: The University of Birmingham is involved in a new project, called VaccMap, that will track 30,000 vaccine vials through the cold chain in Rwanda to improve vaccine security. The VaccMap project will aim to use digital tracking and accountability technology to determine the precise burden of open- and closed-vaccine vial losses, and where …
Ruakura, Hamilton, New Zealand: Maersk has made its largest infrastructure investment in New Zealand to date with the opening of a major new cold store. Maersk says it spent around £69m-£74m on the new site at the Ruakura superhub. The cold store has capacity for nearly 30,000 pallets of products in both cold rooms and …
Hemel Hempstead, UK: Sysco is to open a new 475,000 sq ft warehouse in Hemel Hempstead in 2026 at a cost of $100m (£79m). Sysco, which owns Brakes, will be adapting a former Amazon site to make it suitable for foodservice operations, including the introduction of frozen and chilled areas. The new site will be …
Reading, UK: The Cold Chain Federation has today published the Cold Chain Manifesto ahead of this year’s General Election. Cold Chain: The Vital Link to Turbocharging UK Growth & Security sets out the actions the next government should take to help unlock the great potential of the UK’s temperature-controlled logistics industry. The federation is asking UK political …
London, UK Food continues to be the commodity most at risk of theft in the global supply chain and now accounts for a third of all hijacking incidents – up 29% in 2022. The data suggest thieves are increasingly targeting basic goods that have experienced significant price increases, according to the analysis from BSI. The …
Zeebrugge, Belgium: ECS is Thermo King‘s first customer for it E-Coolpac electric battery genset offering diesel-free power for refrigerated containers. Mounted on a container chassis and powering the Thermo King Magnum Plus refrigerated container, the battery genset are tested by ECS on routes between Belgium and the Netherlands. The project reflects ECS’ focus to improve …
Maputo, Mozambique: A Transaid-supported project has trained more than 450 HGV drivers in Mozambique over two years. All those trained said the training helped them to be better at their job. Transaid’s involvement was part of the initiative Employment and Skills for Development in Africa funded by the German and Norwegian governments, with support from …
London, UK: A group of the largest RHA members has written to the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, ahead of the next month’s Budget. One of the association’s key requests is to reform business rates to support transport businesses operating warehouses. The move comes as cost pressures continue to lead to insolvencies in the haulage sector. One …
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