@Risk

In her speech last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner of Food and Drugs, announced that the FDA is deploying a new web-based information technology system designed to more reliably monitor imports of food and medical products at the port of entry and to target high-risk shipments for further inspection.

The new system, called Predictive Risk-based Evaluation for Dynamic Import Compliance Targeting (PREDICT), uses a variety of assessments to rank import shipments according to risk. It considers everything from whether a product is intrinsically risky (raw seafood, e.g.) to information the FDA has acquired from previous examinations of shippers or producers. Officials can even factor in transitory data such as floods, hot weather or market conditions which might imply that a particular shipment is at risk of being spoiled.  Taken together, these elements add up to a risk score—and the riskiest items are the ones that FDA investigators will check first, Dr. Hamburg said.

In addition to the announcement about PREDICT, Dr. Hamburg’s speech included several statistics that really drive home the message about : 1) the enormous complexity of the challenges faced by the FDA and 2) the dire necessity to improve the status quo at our ports. For instance, she explained that: (more…)

Zepol has created an extremely useful report of the top 50 US ports for port authorities, steamship lines, 3PLs, importers, and suppliers of the United States market.

Titled “The Year in Review: 2009 U.S. Containerized Import Ports Report,” the document includes a list of the 50 U.S. ports based on TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit), plus additional details about: (more…)

Standardized shipping containers have been in use for more than 50 years, and at this point, they’re a supply chain component most of us just take for granted. However, if you stop for a minute and give it some consideration, you’ll certainly come to realize that standardized containerization has had a dramatic effect on international trade –“making the world smaller and the world economy bigger,” as Marc Levinson says.

But even so, not much has changed with the simple iron box conceived fifty years ago.

Well, not much has changed. . . until now. (more…)

NYK says it will further reduce the size of its container ship and car carrier fleets, while it directs attention and focus to its non-asset-based business “for the time being,” according to a report today at The Journal of Commerce.

The company has already made significant reductions. Last year, for instance, the company cut its container fleet from 115 ships of 410,000 20-foot units (TEUs) to about 90 ships with a capacity of 360,000 TEUs. Likewise, its car carrier fleet has been reduced from 130 vessels to approximately 9o.

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U.S. retail container volume is expected to see three straight months of gains in early 2010, ending more than two years (31 months, to be exact) of declines, according to the monthly Port Tracker report released last week by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and IHS Global Insight.

Port Tracker covers a variety of ports, including: Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast; and Houston on the Gulf Coast. (more…)