IBM Asia mandates Panalpina with supply chain management on Europe-Asia routes

Beginning in 2002, Panalpina will offer a fully integrated logistics chain between Asia and Europe on behalf of IBM Asia. The mandate includes shipments for the production of PCs, laptops and data storage systems at IBM’s two Hungarian manufacturing plants in Szekesfehervar and Vac.

Panalpina will handle delivery of production components from Asia to Europe and will also operate a hub with vendor-managed inventory (VMI) in Hungary, from where shipments will be delivered on a just-in-time basis to the factories. The end products will be received by Panalpina ex-factory and exported back to Asia as well as to Australia and New Zealand.

Japan, China, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are the most important countries for this traffic. Other destinations include Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines.
The freight shipments will be transported exclusively by air and handled primarily at Panalpina’s European airfreight hub in Luxembourg as well as at Frankfurt airport. Truck transport between Germany, Luxembourg and Hungary will be coordinated and monitored by Panalpina as part of 4PL management.

Panalpina has also expanded its airfreight capacity between Europe and Japan with a new full freighter flight between Luxembourg and Tokyo Narita.

Panalpina will have exclusive control of the Boeing 747’s entire capacity of 100 freight tons via its subsidiary ASB Air (formerly SwissGlobalCargo), which will supplement the existing four weekly Cargolux flights between Luxembourg and Komatsu.

The new cargo flight will leave Luxembourg each Saturday at 9.30 CET and arrive in Tokyo Narita the next day at 10.50 a.m. local time.