Following our firm's recommendation to the Governor's Inland Port Exploratory Committee about the feasibility of developing a large-scale multimodal port, the Committee met this past week to consider the project.
GLDPartners and Merced County, California simultaneously unveiled three business websites this week. These websites were developed by GLDPartners on behalf of Merced County to create investment opportunities and position the County as an important and strategic business force in the state.
A good interview that lays out Volvo's autonomous vehicle development plan well and generally describes their business approach and the role of corporate partnerships. GLDPartners Auto see's Volvo's mature business approach to the science of AV integration as refreshing and one that will lead to very good things. With the Autoliv connection and the map-back to their ownership's Chinese base, Volvo is an outsized player that will emerge as a true global factor as the industry and the tech matures.
Blending and joining-up these players, funds and economic activity in a strategic manner can yield huge benefits. The Chinese have done this well before, sometimes but not always with the help of huge public investments. The substance of this story is around an infrastructure/property investment group's acquisition of a port asset in China. We think this is probably a smart move, in that market it will create strong market and investment synergies. In North America and Europe, we should be joining things up better.
In her January 2nd CNBC article Internet giants fuel warehouse demand as land prices surge, Lauren Thomas describes how industrial land valuations are rising quickly due to the pressured of demand from ecommerce uses. Though there are some wide variations, GLDPartners experiences this every day in our project work - that there is a shortage of well-sited and ready to build industrial land. Much of this challenge is due to the incredible rise in demand for developing new ecommerce distribution centers. This is true in the US but also increasingly so in other developed ecommerce markets in Canada, and parts of Europe and Asia. Where there is land supply with good multimodal transport infrastructure access, land values are rising.
In his Dec 15 article in Tech Crunch, Deep Patel talks about the importance of some very visible moves made by UPS and some other giants in the logistics world around the concept of blockchain technology. Though discussed for years, the current movement behind blockchain is fueled by strong interest by many to develop a far more transparent and streamlined overall shipping logistics system. Patel refers to the coming world of blockchain logistics as a "revolution". The reality is that synthesizing and sharing information on common transparent platforms is critically necessary for a range of reasons, including cost/loss management, shipper security and logistics hand-off efficiency - and this will happen to a degree not seen today, it's just a matter of innovation, collaboration and speed
In 2016 direct intermodal import rail routings declined, while total imports grew. This is termed by some in the logistics industry as the “Divergence of 2016”. Specifically, last year saw imports into the US grew by approximately 2%, all-water services to the US grew 4%, and direct import intermodal rail routings declined by .02%. Transloading, or transferring the contents of 40-foot marine containers to 53-foot domestic truck trailers or domestic rail containers for inland routing at or near the import port, has increased.
GLDPartners has conducted an investment opportunity analysis reviewing the potential for Stockholm to play a larger role as a Nordic-region logistics hub. The region has been working to position itself as a super-regional strategic multimodal logistics center by making a range of investments in road, rail, seaport and airport infrastructure.
Economic development advocates, infrastructure developers, local elected officials, governors and members of state legislatures should be concerned and motivated to let their representatives in Congress know of their concern about proposals included in both the outlines of the House and Senate tax reform proposals as far as supporting efforts aimed to create jobs, rebuild infrastructure and promote the competitiveness of American industry.
GLDPartners has helped to craft a unique partnership agreement between the Port of Los Angeles (portoflosangeles.org) and the Mid-California International Trade District (MCITD, midcalitd.com). This an extremely unique project in the United States with a formal partnership linkage between the busiest seaport in North America and a major industrial manufacturing and logistics hub, both in California. Both parties felt that collaboration would benefit each individually and also the wider economy in the State, which represents the 6th largest economy in the world. This project reflects the Port's vision for a larger "Connecting California" strategy. The partnership engineers a structured intersection between industrial policy, real asset development, public/private investment, transport infrastructure, labor force development and global logistics connectivity.