In the end, Apple’s pricing has everything to do with its supply chain. MacBook Air rides with solid-state storage and Apple has those supplies locked up. After all, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch use a lot of Flash supply. Meanwhile, Apple can call its shots with screens too.

It’s quite possible that Apple is just passing along some of its savings on the MacBook Air bill of materials. In any case, a less expensive MacBook Air is going to squeeze the ultrabook market.

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The technology necessary to provide this edge is not cheap, and requires time and money to implement.

One firm, which decided to take the initiative to be outstanding from the competition, is Mr Koh’s Addicon. Addicon serves the garment industry and medical device companies, and wanted to be able to do “big volumes without mistakes” for better margins.

Five years ago, Addicon splashed $300,000 to enter a new technological age of radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs), which look like simple rubber tags, and are attached to the wooden pallets on which boxes of goods are loaded.

The tags contain data that details the contents of boxes, strings of product and batch numbers, destination and origin information. This information is available 24/7, and is detected by Addicon’s wired up warehouse at Old Toh Tuck Road.

It was a big change from the use of barcodes, where a worker had to scan each box in a tedious effort to account for its location.

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Interestingly, with 64 percent of those surveyed expecting the carbon tax to impact on their businesses, 42 percent of those believe it will come through increased transport costs, followed by 22 percent who expect an increase in the price of products and services.

PwC quotes Suzie Wright, CEO of machinery attachments firm Digga Australia, as saying:” “The carbon tax is going to drive a lot of our supply chain offshore.

“As much as we want to use our local suppliers, product that’s being made here is going to be affected through price increases on transport, fuel and materials.”

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Cargo 2000 now has over 80 members representing the airline, freight forwarding, ground handling, road transport, IT and airport sectors, all working to improve the quality of air cargo by implementing Cargo 2000’s Master Operating Plan. It defines an industry standard process for moving goods from the door of the shipper to the door of the consignee with shipment planning and measurement systems which pro-actively monitor progress and alert operators to deviations to the plan. The program also generates the data needed to drive the quality management process.

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K+N have been testing this device for more than 12 months with several airlines, and are looking forward to more carriers giving them the green light for use on their flights. K+N are expanding their receiving station installations – which collect and transmit the data as soon as the shipments are in range – from the 20 available at launch to full pharmaceutical logistics network coverage.

Industrial property is also increasingly characterised by the trend towards fewer but larger central distribution centres, supported by multiple smaller regional centres for cross-docking and rapid turnaround of goods. Cross-docking is where incoming goods are already packaged for the customer and re-routed without being stored.

The increasing complexity of international supply chains has resulted in this trend, said the report, Supply Chain Trends: Implications for Industrial Property, by Colliers International and Logiworx.

The report said increasing globalisation and consolidation of mass manufacturing in emerging regions – Asia and Eastern Europe – meant businesses had to manage their supply chains better. This had resulted in consolidation into fewer and larger distribution centres, which were traditionally a main warehouse or storage centre.

The report found that from 2009-2011, the size of an average property transaction had grown from 21,000 square metres to 27,000 sq m. Over the past 10 years, the new role of cross-docking had emerged at smaller, downstream centres.

Source: SMH

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John Valastro of Qantas says the flight is a commercial first in Australia. “It’s actually really significant because it’s the first commercial flight to be powered by sustainable aviation fuel in Australia and that’s a big step for this country,” he said. He says the flight will produce far less carbon emissions than if conventional jet fuel were used. “We’re talking about a 60 per cent reduction in the overall life cycle of the fuel, so that’s a substantial improvement,” he said. The biofuel component of the fuel used for the flight is from refined cooking oil.

Biofuels are sometimes criticised for cutting into potential food supplies but Qantas says it has used a product that is not a food crop. The oil came from and was refined in Houston before it was shipped to Australia. It has cost more than four times an equivalent flight using normal fuel, partly because of the shipping distance involved. Mr Valastro went on to say that passengers are not paying a surcharge. “We’re actually using this opportunity to highlight what needs to be done, getting people on board,” he said.

Aviation industry analyst Tom Ballantyne says Qantas and other airlines want governments to invest in the biofuels push. “We know we can make them, we know they’re exactly the same as jet fuel and have absolutely no impact on the operation of the aircraft,” he said. “The trick is making enough and building the infrastructure to provide that. “What is actually needed is money. A lot of the big airlines’ argument is that governments should invest money in the refineries which are required to produce these biofuels. They argue that very strongly, but so far many governments have been a bit slow in coming forward.” The hope is that biofuels will eventually cost about the same as current jet fuel. Peter Zurzolo heads the Future Farming Co-operative Research Centre. At Narrogin, south-east of Perth, he and others are trialing whether the common mallee eucalypt is a viable biofuel source. “Not only is it a common tree but it’s well understood. In WA alone, we know there’s about 13,000 hectares on about 1,000 farms,” he said. “We’re providing what we’re hoping is a long-term sustainable and regionally-based feedstock supply that can be competitively grown into different processing units, hopefully around regional Australia,” he said.

Unveiling the reform recently, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that the trucking industry would be exempt for two years when the tax begins on July 1, 2012.

The scheme will begin at $23 per tonne of carbon, rising to $24.15 the following year and $25.40 in July 2014 before moving to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015.

The $25.40 tax will increase diesel prices by 6.85 cents through a reduction in the fuel tax credit rate, which will continue to decline as the cost of carbon increases.

Once implemented, trucking potentially faces a double whammy on diesel prices from July 2014 because the fuel tax credit is reduced at the beginning of each financial year to account for government expenditure on the road network.

These costs could be further compounded by higher wages as CPI will move upwards as cost of food and other items will increase. Overall sad news for the competiveness of Australia’s trucking industry.

Panalpina, the 4th largest forwarder in the world after DHL, K&N and Schenker, together with 13 others were recently fined EUR169 million (US$225 million) by the European Commission for participation in cartels in international air freight forwarding services.

Panalpina was fined EUR46.5 million, while Kuehne & Nagel, also based in Switzerland, was told to pay EUR53.7 million. Deutsche Bahn and subsidiary Schenker were fined 34.9 million. The various companies operated one of the international cartels based on meetings at an unpretentious Italian restaurant near London and used code words like “fresh marrow” and “asparagus” to disguise illegal surcharges.

In an interview, Panalpina’s chief executive, Monika Ribar, admitted that her company and its peers had a record of cartels and other anti-competitive practices. “It is true our industry has gained a poor record, based on problems in the past. But companies have learned to deal much more seriously with the situation in recent years.”

Mrs Ribar argued change had been triggered by much tougher laws in Europe and the US, and a greater emphasis on ethics among freight companies.

She pointed out that the latest EU fines reflected past problems that had taken years to investigate fully. “The EU Commission has taken five years to get somewhere. The whole story happened between 2000 and 2005. Our company has changed dramatically in the meantime.”

Panalpina, has had various brushes with regulators. In addition to the latest European crackdown, the group has previously paid almost $82 million in a deferred prosecution agreement under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, after probes into its Nigerian activities prompted it to pull out of the country.

Panalpina has also lost business from government departments and big companies whose policies forbid them from trading with partners sanctioned for anti-competitive or corrupt practices.

“Now as a chief executive in freight you deal more and more with lawyers than with your core business”, said Mrs Ribar. Among the changes she has instituted in the company include elevating compliance, with the appointment of a chief compliance officer reporting directly to the CEO, creating much bigger local compliance teams and increasing focus on corporate ethics.

“Companies have learned to deal much more sensibly with the situation,” Mrs Ribar said. “At Panalpina, we haven’t left a single stone unturned in re-examining the way we do business.