Los Angeles, Long Beach imports still sinking
Los Angeles had expected its numbers to be ugly in February — and they were.
“The decline was indeed steep,” acknowledged Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka during a press conference Friday.
Total throughput fell to only 487,846 twenty-foot equivalent units in February, plunging 43% year on year. Last month’s throughput was down 33% from January and 31% from February 2019, pre-COVID.
Los Angeles looks like it fell back to third place among U.S. container ports for the month of February. The Port of New York/New Jersey topped Los Angeles during several months in 2022; it has yet to report February numbers but appears likely to report higher throughput than Los Angeles.
On Tuesday, Long Beach reported February throughput of 543,675 TEUs, coming in 11% above Los Angeles.
Zipline to launch home deliveryy service using drone-droid combo
Zipline is launching a home delivery service that leverages a drone-droid delivery team, according to an announcement Wednesday.
When the drone arrives at its location, it hovers while an autonomous droid it carries maneuvers down a tether before dropping off the package. This allows deliveries to be made in areas as small as a patio table or the front steps of a home, versus a spacious yard that drone services often require.
Zipline plans to make more than 10,000 test flights using about 100 aircraft this year for the “Platform 2” service. The company will deploy its first customer pilot shortly after testing, per a fact sheet.
Read More Here Supply Chain Dive
Traders marshal a fleet of supertankers to haul U.S. oil to Europe
Europe is set to import a record amount of American crude in March, relying increasingly on larger tankers as sanctions on Russian oil upend global trade routes.
Ships hauling as much as 1.84 million barrels a day are set to arrive from the U.S. Gulf in March, tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. Meanwhile, smaller vessels are getting costly with more being booked to transport Russian oil for journeys to Asia.
The trade boom is another byproduct of Russia’s war in Ukraine — and sanctions that the west slapped on Moscow in reaction to it. The shift probably makes the fleet less efficient, thereby eroding the total supply of tankers, which transport roughly 40% of the world’s oil.
Read More Here Supply Chain Brain