Happy New Year and welcome to the first Warehouse & Logistics News of 2018. We hope you all had a great Christmas. To ease you back into working mode, we have features on Transport & Logistics, Warehouse Automation and appropriately for this time of year, Cold Storage & Distribution, plus all our regular sections.

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On-line shopping and ecommerce continue to be major drivers for the warehousing and logistics sector all year round, fuelling demand for quality lightweight packaging to deliver small items safely and high volume systems to process it. On our front cover packaging distributor Southgate is disrupting the void fill market with two innovative paper void fill and pad fill systems. The X-FILL™ and X-PAD™ feature new-generation anti-jamming technology that increases productivity through high output speeds and almost zero jamming.

On-line shopping and ecommerce are also driving the move to Warehouse Automation. In our feature Toyota Material Handling has launched two semiautomated remote driver order picking trucks, which show productivity gains of up to 20%. For businesses struggling with the high initial investment cost of switching to automation DLL, the forklift finance company has announced a new fixed fee leasing option, avoiding upfront capital outlay.

Making full use of enterprise mobility solutions is key for today’s warehousing and logistics operations. In our Transport & Logistics feature we talk to Les Morley, MD of Pen Mobile Solutions, who offer tailored solutions in enterprise mobility, mobile printing and mobile data capture to UK and European retailers, distributors and public sector organisations. Given today’s 24/7, last minute business environment Pen also holds a core stock of devices for short-term rental.

According to our Cold Storage & Distribution feature, the cold store is where most problems arise in the cold chain, due to poor temperature control. Hörmann’s doors for frozen and chilled environments include double door systems that allow docked vehicles to be unloaded before doors are opened into frozen storage zones. Gemini Data Loggers, maker of the Tinytag range, has launched new Plus LAN data loggers allowing remote temperature monitoring across multiple locations. Frozen food logistics specialist Newcold Advanced Cold Logistics is providing a specialist warehousing and distribution service used by growing numbers of UK frozen foods producers, which uses 50% less energy per pallet than a traditional cold store.

In our first Forklift News section of 2018 we interview Lily Fu, Director and General Manager of Longhe UK, the UK and Ireland arm of China’s premier forklift truck attachments manufacturer. Lily and Andy Carr, two former JCB procurement specialists, set up Longhe UK in 2016. And finally, also in this section, don’t miss our article on Jungheinrich’s newly published White Paper, Redefining Rental for Materials Handling Equipment, calling for a more flexible approach to fork truck rentals, a topic we expect to hear more about in the coming months.

The next Warehouse & Logistics News will be published on January 15th. Happy New Year!

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