Just found the article Special Delivery: UPS Moving Ancient Terracotta Army, and had to write a quick post as I think this a great example of how some firms are able to get themselves into the middle of some interesting things.

For those who have yet to visit Xi’an, these warriors are simply an amazing site, and they rank up there with the Great Wall and Forbidden City in terms of cultural significance.

According to the ariticle:

UPS (NYSE:UPS) today unloaded an exhibit of the 2,200-year-old Chinese terra cotta warriors, horses and other artifacts at its West coast air hub in Ontario, Calif., after a long flight from Shanghai.

to make this move possible, UPS actually had to take special care

The U.S.-bound exhibit was packed in 42 specially-constructed crates for movement in the 747-400:

So, for whoever sold this project on behalf of UPS, my hats off to you. In my mind, this is one for the books, and I am sure the people in Nanpu and Atlanta are gleaming over this

Note: for the sake of full disclosure, I was once an intern with UPS and they forced me to shave off my goatee.

A native of St Louis, I am used to the fact that my hometown is a 2nd tier US city.

The Gateway to the West, we are famous as a good sports town, the Arch, Anheuser Busch, and a few other things… but it is St. Louis’s geographic position that historically gave St. Louis an advantage.

If you have read the book The Box, or perhaps just read my post 3 weeks ago about the impact on US export opportunities following a shortage of containers, then you will have a basic understanding that geographic position + good logistics can = good business. And so it was with great excitement that I read the article St. Louis places a trade bet on China

Economically, St. Louis is a city that used to rely heavily on large companies like TWA, McDonnell Douglas, Monsanto, and Ford to provide its manufacturing base. the problem with that reliance is that many of these firms have moved, been scaled down, or have shuttered… and so a process of revitalization has been occurring, and it appears that St Louis is returning to its roots:

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I learned a long time ago, that while Shanghai moves quick you sometimes end up hanging out while people need to make their way across town for appointments. So, wihle waiting for my lunch appointment (I made it early), I caught up on some reading by opening up the CHaINA that is sitting on my desk.

By far China’s best english language logistics publication, I was happy to see that I not only made the front cover, but that my post last month entitled Factory Closing: Why Is Anyone Shocked? This Was Coming was highlighted in the blog section.

Mug shot of me, and a reposted All Roads article aside, this magazine is a must for anyone looking to learn more about cold chain (particularly those interested in the Olympic food chain) . There are also a number of interesting articles on the logistics of flowers from Yunnan (written by Chris at Go Kunming), and a large news roundup section as well.

to access the new (and fantastically slick) web version go here, and honestly (this is my inner treehugger talking) you do not need to print this or ask for printed copy anymore. Their web version is more than enough.

In China, it really is difficult to imagine all the behind the scenes planning going on every 5 years in Beijing. But, the evidence is very visible. New government buildings in many city, airports, ports, roads, metro, and so on. It is an infrastructural orgy of investment, and as we have seen over the last 10 days, it is still not enough.

As if we needed another reminder of just how the transport systems in China are being pressed to the max, this Aviation Week article provides as interesting look at the aviation industry in China and how it just cannot grow anymore without the addition of more infrastructure.

With regard to the recent air capacity issues, this is a situation that was horrible 18 months ago. Planes were consistently 1-2 hours delayed, lines were long, and even getting a cab from the airport seemed to take a half day (unless you took the gypsy cabs). A large part of this was the number of airplanes available for commercial airliners, and the fact that any weather delays forced the system to a halt as new lanes could not be made available.

There has been some improvement over the last year as a few “guaranteed” lanes between the major cities have been established, and as they are the most heavily traveled lanes it has provided some relief. However, as a recent announcement to build 97 new airports indicates, there is still a lot to do.

What I find interesting about this situation is that while oil prices are increasing, and traffic has never been higher, the prices are still going down.

With all that China has grown, it is fairly easy to get lost in the glitter and believe that things are more stable that they really are, and the last week has really shown this. There has no doubt been unprecedented growth and investment in many areas of the economy, but things are still very fragile in certain areas and will require more time before fully balancing. The airline industry is one of those

An interesting clip on Youtube as been released by the user TNTcommunications on TNT’s China Operations.

While the China domestic market one of great interested by everyone in the express market, TNT has taken a much different approach. The clear leader at this point being Fedex, who purchased Datian and have 38 guaranteed cities, I have yet to see TNT do much more than to buy out their partner Sinotrans.

Where TNT has taken a stronghold is through their Shenzhen Anda operations, and their capabilities in their automotive services.

With that being said, if TNT is anything like the other groups then they are defiantly looking at ways to improve their position, and while FedEx has a clear advantage at this point, it is safe to say that anything is possible in the domestic market.

One of the major concerns that has been ongoing is food, and more specifically food safety. Living in central Shanghai, one would think that produce would be delivered to the market buy a 53 foot refrigerated trailer, or at a minimum be boxed.

But something that I have seen more often in China than not is that a truck no more than 5 meters long will pull up to the corner, and 4-5 people will unload a half ton of produce onto the sidewalk.

Produce buyers will then ride up, inspect the goods, and the transaction occurs. Sellers go how with the sidewalk is once again void of produce.

At other times it is trucks full of cabbage going down the highway uncovered….

Previously, I got into this issue from a more supply chain stand, but for the purposes of this post, I will look at the impact of China’s food chain has from a sustainability standpoint because essentially what it boils down to is that this system of supply chain management creates a huge amount of waste, and possesses a huge amount of risk to health.

Recently the Cargonews Article Mainland needs cold chain standards discussed the need for cold chain in China, and just how important it is for significant capacity be brought online. Throught his article though, what I really gained was another angle on just how the inefficiencies in China’s Supply Chain have a tangible impact on China’s economy. Typically measured at 20% of GDP (U.S. is under 10%), where this article’s important lies in it focus on the fact that within the food chain there is much higher waste.

according to the article:

China accounts for 13 percent of global fruit production and 40 percent of the vegetable output. But because of inefficiency in the distribution and transport of farm products there is a loss of US$10 billion annually. Around 30 percent of the total production of fruit and vegetables are wasted because of a lack of temperature control.

and that

that 60 percent of the meat and 80 percent of the milk and soyabean products in China do not use cold chain systems

Before tackling the warm meat and milk, let’s look at how the 30% produce waste occurs, and what this really means:

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While on a trip to Sinapore in 2001 with 30 Thunderbird students, we were given a behindthe scenes tour of the singapore port and its plans to develop.  the goal was simple.. surpase HK once and for all.

Well, apparently it didn’t work out as planned, and as reported in the China and Shanghai Daily papers, Shanghai has now passed HK to become the world’s second largest port with an amazing 26+ million TEUs.

If there were any doubt about how important the Yangtze delta has become, this should bring about a bit of reality.  26 million TEUS is nearly the throughput of the entire country of Vietnam, and that is factoring in the bulk freight that is also moving through the port.

and if that weren’t enough, Tianjin just logged a 20% increase on last year with 7 million TEUs … and is looking to ramp that us significantly over the next few years.

Now wonder a PE fund specifically for improving the shipping industry is being set up in Tianjin…. Shipping expansion floated

So, congratulations to the folsk at Shanghai Port, and JIAYOU to the folks at Tianjin port.