Shanghai GM sets Sail for Chile
GM’s joint venture with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation has begun exports of the Chevrolet New Sail to the Chilean market with 1,000 of the vehicles already dispatched on a vessel operated by Chile’s CSAV. The company has also announced plans to sell the sedan in other South American markets as well as North Africa and the Middle East.
It is the first vehicle manufactured by an international GM brand to be exported and the company reports that 10,000 vehicles have been allocated for the first round of exports to foreign markets from China’s Shanghai and Yantai ports.
The New Sail made its global debut in China in January 2010 and 90,000 have been sold there in the first nine months of the year.
Menlo extends service for Dana
Menlo Worldwide Logistics has extended its logistics for Dana Holding to include a further 19 of the automotive systems supplier’s manufacturing plants in Europe.
Menlo has been providing logistics services for Dana’s North American operations since early in 2008, including 3PL services covering both inbound and outbound transport to sites in the US, Canada and Mexico.
The company will manage carrier operations both inbound to Dana’s 19 plants and all outbound product distribution to European destinations supervised from its ‘control tower’ facility in Eersel, Netherlands. It will provide shipment tracking and comprehensive visibility, carrier bookings control, cost auditing and relevant KPI monitoring.
Dana’s Senior Global Logistics Manager Paul Wood, said: “We believe this programme with Menlo will add long-term value to Dana through leveraged spend, improved audit processes, clarity of data on a single system for the whole of Europe, and professional management of our transport providers. It will give us a process and set of tools to review our network design in a standardized and methodological way, and detailed spend visibility.”
ITM accolades for Gefco UK
Gefco UK has been named European Logistics Company 2010 by the Institute of Transport Management (ITM) and has received the Automotive Logistics Supplier 2010 award issued by the transport industry body.
The ITM’s ongoing accreditation programme judges logistics companies on the quality of service, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and customer care that they provide.
Commenting on the awards, ITM’s Patrick Sheedy said the shortlist of nominees for the award all scored highly but that Gefco had more than satisfied the stringent standards of the Awards Committee in its provision of “superlative European-wide logistics services”.
Howard Nash, automotive director at Gefco UK said: “We are delighted to have been named European Logistics Company 2010 and Automotive Logistics Supplier 2010 by the ITM. These two outstanding award wins, that highlight best practice, demonstrate Gefco’s commitment to providing high quality service and care to our customers, as well as strengthening our standing as industry leaders in the European transport and logistics arena.”
Carmakers count the carbon cost of transport
Carmakers in Europe are showing increasing interest in the Carbon Calculator tool provided by the Association of European Vehicle Carriers (ECG). Trials have already been completed at Toyota, are currently underway at Jaguar Land Rover and are about to start at Renault Nissan.
Speaking at the second session dedicated to ‘Green Logistics’ at the recent ECG conference held in Berlin, Germany, Mike Sturgeon, the ECG’s executive director, said there was also great interest in the calculator amongst US companies. He also said that there was potential for coordination with US automotive action group, AIAG, on its application on the grounds of greater standardisation, which he added, “needed to be global rather than European”.
“The carbon calculator project started three years ago,” explained Sturgeon. “It was driven by the need to monitor environmental performance and the desire to establish a common standard for CO2 emissions measurement.”
According to Sturgeon the calculator allows logistics service providers to automate the calculation of CO2 produced by the transport of vehicles in Europe across all modes and was drawn up in collaboration with environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, which provided a report on the external cost of transport. The methodology was used as the basis for the measurement software developed with finished vehicle supply chain software specialist Vehnet.
With trials underway at Jaguar Land Rover, Sturgeon confirmed “we will be ready to start trials with Renault Nissan at the end of the month.”
Speaking during the session, Emile Benaim, director of vehicle logistics for Toyota Motors Europe, confirmed that Toyota had now fully adopted use of the Carbon Calculator to measure CO2 emissions across its outbound supply chain and would be promoting its use amongst the company’s logistics suppliers in coming months.
