Air cargo carriers stacked their freighter orders. Brady picked up Honeywell’s barcode unit for $1.4 billion. And Gartner is warning that “agent washing” is starting to inflate the agentic AI conversation. Fifteen items from the last 24 hours, sorted by where they hit hardest.
Operations & 3PL
Walmart opened a prepaid consolidation program for its inbound suppliers, letting them merge less-than-truckload shipments into full truckloads at automated consolidation points feeding the retailer’s 42 regional distribution centers. Under the old setup, a vendor could cut up to 42 separate purchase orders for a single product line. Now: one pallet, one PO. Source: American Shipper
Atlanta-based 3PL Stord closed a $250 million Series F at a $3 billion valuation. The round funds Stord Labs, a new unit pointed at robotics and AI across the fulfillment stack. The company says it has booked 10x revenue growth on roughly $15 billion of customer GMV across 1,000-plus brands. Source: The Loadstar
Polish developer 7R wrapped construction on a combined manufacturing and warehouse facility in Brzezie, near Sulechów, for Dutch building-products group Toppoint. Depenbrock Polska handled the build. Another tick in the box for west-Poland nearshoring. Source: Logistics Manager
Israel Ports Company opened a tender covering roughly 18 dunams (1.8 hectares) of land in the Haifa Bay Port hinterland. Ten-year authorization framework, with room for sub-authorizations linked to port operations. IPC is betting that Haifa stays a Mediterranean transhipment node despite ongoing regional friction. Source: Container News
Technology & Automation
ArcBest rolled out View, a single-pane platform letting customers quote, book and track shipments end-to-end. It plugs into a wider asset-light push: ArcBest’s asset-light segment hit a record-low SG&A-per-shipment in Q1, with adjusted operating income of $2.8 million ahead of management’s own expectations. Source: FreightWaves
Brady Corporation will buy Honeywell’s Productivity Solutions and Services unit for $1.4 billion in cash. PSS makes the mobile computers, barcode scanners, printers and software used to scan, label and track items across warehouses, plants and DCs. Closing is set for the second half of 2026, subject to regulators. Source: Logistics Viewpoints
Taiwan’s robotics supply chain posted double-digit revenue and profit gains in Q1 2026. Systems integrators and transmission-component makers are riding two waves at once: traditional industrial automation, and the early commercial pull from humanoid and AI-driven robotics. Source: DIGITIMES
Gartner is calling out “agent washing”: vendors relabeling conventional automation as agentic AI. Most current capabilities improve user experience through query interpretation and recommendations, but stop short of autonomous plan generation and execution, the firm says. Anyone promising end-to-end autonomous supply chain planning before 2027 is overstating what is possible. Source: DC Velocity
Sustainability & Energy
NYK plans its sixth transition bond issuance in mid-June, with proceeds earmarked for decarbonization projects including LNG-fuelled vessels under the carrier’s Sail Green plan. NYK now runs one of the densest transition-bond curves in container and dry-bulk shipping. Source: Hellenic Shipping News
DHL moved roughly 50 containers of Formula 1 race equipment by rail from Miami to Montreal: 46 forty-foot high-cubes and four twenty-foot units, across nearly 2,000 kilometres. About 68% of the freight on that leg shifted from road to rail. A small slice of the calendar, but a real-world test for time-critical sport logistics. Source: Logistics Business
Clean Energy argues that renewable natural gas has finally cleared its three biggest hurdles for Class 8 trucking: a viable 15-litre engine, a broader fueling footprint, and a gap of $3-plus per gallon versus diesel. The pitch isn’t about projections any more, it’s about fleet-level economics already on the road. Source: FreightWaves
International Markets
Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines will fold their cargo operations onto a single platform after Hawaiian Air Cargo’s migration to IBS. One booking surface, one operational stack: the next step after the holding-company merger. Source: Logistics Manager
Cathay Pacific exercised options for two more Airbus A350 freighters, taking its book to eight. Air China Cargo placed a firm order for four additional A350Fs (10 in total). Airbus’s freighter backlog at the large end is closing in on twice Boeing’s. Source: FreightWaves
Hapag-Lloyd COO Maximilian Rothkopf will step down on 30 June 2026 by mutual agreement, after seven years on the board. He stays on as an advisor through the transition. Rothkopf oversaw fleet modernisation and the carrier’s decarbonisation push over a fleet that now stands at around 300 vessels and 2.5 million TEU. Source: Container News
Asia-Europe container volumes held up through the first months of 2026, while transpacific lanes weakened: a classic divergence after a year of overlapping shocks. Schedule reliability, capacity discipline and tariff uncertainty are doing most of the heavy lifting on rates. Source: Container News
Related Coverage
- Blue Yonder Doubles Down on Agentic AI at ICON 2026
- GLS France Acquires Relais Colis Parcel Network From Walden Group
- Gebrüder Weiss Opens €100M Automated Logistics Platform in Austria
- FM Logistic Secures SBTi Validation for 1.5°C Decarbonization Plan
Updated daily — your morning briefing on global supply chain.
