The Japanese NYK Group has announced initiatives in several business sectors as part of a strategy to serve as a big-time logistics integrator.

It has targeted automobile-related industries, the retail trade and harbour transport to provide value-added services to complement its usual shipping services.
In automobile-related industries, NYK said in addition to the marine transport of finished vehicles, it would deliver a range of services. These include improvements to the network of dedicated terminals under group management, stepping up the inland transport of finished cars and offering additional value-added services such as milk-run (route-based collection and delivery) services between auto-parts makers and car plants, and pre-delivery inspection (PDI) services.
“In recent years, the automotive industry has progressively transferred production activities to overseas bases. As a consequence, the physical distribution of both finished cars and auto parts is no longer a simple process of linking one end of the supply chain to the other,” it said.
For customers in the retail trade, it will provide, in addition to the usual transport services for containerised cargoes, a “buyer’s consolidation service” including cross-dock services.
“We will undertake the integrated management of transport so as to cover every step in the process – from consolidation of cargoes at each port of loading to arrangement for loading onto ships, packing, marine transport, discharging and final delivery to customers’ distribution centres.”
Under cross-dock operations, varieties of products are “devanned” (unpacked) from containers in warehouses at ports of discharging, sorted and re-sorted for transport to customers’ stores and distribution centres, it explained.
It noted that cross-docking allowed customers to react flexibly to trends in the market, while giving them the power to dictate which inventories are sent to which outlets as demand ebbs and flows. Cross-docking made possible dramatic reductions in inventories and storage space, the company stressed.
“Innovation drives the NYK Group by ensuring that customers will continue to count on us as a logistics integrator to provide efficient, custom-tailored solutions.”
Commenting on the terminal and harbour transport sector, the group said it would further improve and more efficiently manage its port terminals.
It has already established an extensive network of terminals at 23 key ports in the US, Canada, Europe, Japan, Asia and Oceania.
“On the heels of its decision to participate in the management of vehicle terminals in Shanghai and Dalian, the group is studying new projects in China and Latin America in a bid to further enlarge the scope of its terminal business,” it said..
“Thus the NYK Group is positively expanding its various terminal-related operations.”
NYK said it would continue to invest significantly in marine transport, a mainstay of the group’s business, but it would broaden its operational base to cope with the cyclical nature of the shipping market.
“As a logistics integrator, the NYK Group will function as a team of logistic enterprises able to meet increasingly diversified and sophisticated customer needs by deploying its considerable infrastructure including a large-scale fleet and by tapping into its know-how accumulated over 120 years to offer a transport network covering the sea, land and air, said the group.
The initiatives come as part of the group’s medium-term management plan named New Horizon 2007.