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
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.
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.
GLDPartners is working on the Utah Inland Port Feasibility and Delivery Analysis. Governor Herbert has created an exploratory committee to research the feasibility of an inland port for the state of Utah. Inland ports are designated sites with strong transportation infrastructure and distribution operations. Suzette Alles is the International Business Development Specialist for World Trade Center Utah. She said land-locked states such as Utah use inland ports much like traditional coastal ports, providing services, including customs clearance, to speed the process of inland international trade
This article in American Shipper is about the impact of the new trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, and specifically on logistics connectivity between Europe and Montreal. Maersk Line will add a new service to its transatlantic network just as a free trade deal between Canada and Europe is initiated, the company said in a statement. The Danish ocean carrier will join service operator Hapag-Lloyd and slot purchaser CMA CGM on the JMCSA service from Mediterranean ports to Montreal on Sept. 30.
Jody Meacham of the Silicon Valley Business Journal has written this week about a project that GLDPartners is working on in California. Their lead story: Exclusive: Merced County is developing a 2,000-acre auto tech center for Silicon Valley's self-driving cars tells the story about how we're working with Merced County on the development of a large-scale multimodal manufacturing and logistics hub, the Mid-California International Trade District. This complex is slated to be a $1B project that will house 8M square feet of tech-industrial development and about 10,000 jobs.