Issue link: http://digital.nexsitepublishing.com/i/643635
www.cargobusinessnews.com January 2016 9 neWs, trends & analysIs existing airport, is believed to be the only cross-border airport outside the European Union. In October, Mexican authorities began inspecting Mexico-bound cargo at the airport in Laredo, Texas. U.S. authorities plan to inspect U.S.-bound trucks in San Jeronimo, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, near the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. Cargo has long been inspected in the U.S. and in Mexico. The new "pre- inspection" facilities effectively blends two stops into one. For more of the CBS DFW story: dfw.cbslocal.com AMERiCold bUyS WAREhoUSE hUb iN ATlANTA Americold, which provides tempera- ture-controlled warehousing and logis- tics to the food industry, announced it has finalized the purchase of the Trade- water facility in Atlanta, GA. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The facility, at 6500 Tradewater Park- way in Atlanta, was constructed in 2005 as a build-to-suit site for an international food producer. Americold assumed the lease in 2006 and has operated it as a public refrigerated warehouse facility since. The addition of the Tradewater site increases Americold's owned tem- perature-controlled storage capacity in the Atlanta market to more than 53 mil- lion cubic feet. The facility is more than 455,000 square feet and offers temperature- controlled storage capabilities between 0° and 34° F. The property is rail-served by CSX with temperature-controlled rail and truck docks, and has 60 dock doors with significant staging area capabilities for an assortment of value-added services including: case picking, order-kitting and assembly, repacking, tempering, blast freezing, cross-docking, date coding, full transportation FTL and LTL capabilities, and customized order processing. "It's always been our goal to fully inte- grate the Tradewater site into our port- folio, and everything aligned to conclude the purchase early in the year. As owners of the property, we will continue to invest in the site to further enhance the services offered to our clients," said Fred Boehler, president and COO. "These are exciting times for Americold and our customers." gERMANy'S liNdE SElliNg logiSTiCS UNiT giST foR $875M Germany's Linde is launching the sale of its temperature-controlled logistics unit Gist in a deal potentially worth more than $875 million, as it stream- lines operations to focus on core indus- trial gas operations, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Linde has mandated Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for the unit with 570 million euros ($618 million) in 2014 sales and is planning to send out first information packages to prospective bidders by the end of the month, they said. Linde and Morgan Stanley declined to comment. Linde had earmarked Gist for sale in March last year, when Chief Executive Wolfgang Buechele said that the unit, which delivers cooled food and bever - ages mainly in the United Kingdom, was no longer considered "core business." The company is expected to shop Gist to logistics players such as Deutsche Post, UPS, Kuehne+Nagel, Logwin, and Imperial as well as private equity groups. F o r m o r e o f t h e R e u t e r s s t o r y : www.reuters.com RAil CARgo dRoP bAd SigN foR U.S. ECoNoMy Analysts at Bank of America are look- ing at the U.S. railroad, which has dropped the most in six years in 2015, and things aren't looking good for the new year. "We believe rail data may be signaling a warning for the broader economy," says a recent note from Bank of Amer- ica. "Carloads have declined more than 5 percent in each of the past 11 weeks on a year-over-year basis. While one-off volume declines occur occasionally, they are generally followed by a recovery shortly thereafter. The current period of substantial and sustained weakness, in- cluding last week's -10.1 percent decline, has not occurred since 2009." BofA analysts led by Ken Hoexter look at the past 30 years to see what this type of steep decline usually means for the U.S. economy. What they found wasn't particularly encouraging: All such drops in rail carloads preceded, or were ac- companied by, an economic slowdown. Many would argue a shift away from coal-powered energy, a slowdown in the industrial sector, and the diminishing U.S. shale boom would naturally lead to fewer goods being moved by rail. Hoexter and his team, however, say that the slowdown is spreading to more con - sumer-oriented segments. Intermodal carloads typically related to consumer goods were up 1 percent in the first quar- ter of 2015 and 3.6 percent in the second quarter but fell 1.7 percent in the final quarter of last year. Thus the team is taking a cautious tone, at least through the first half of the year when the analysts cite tough comparitives. "While many of the rails have successfully trimmed expenses commensurate with volume declines, we are concerned about the extent to which cost-cutting can support [earnings-per- share] growth targets," they write. For more of the Bloomberg story: www.bloomberg.com fEdEx WiNS EU APPRovAl foR TNT dEAl FedEx Corp. received unconditional approval from European Union regula- tors to buy smaller parcel delivery rival TNT Express NV, almost three years after United Parcel Service was blocked from a similar takeover. The EU's formal review of the $4.8 bil- lion deal revealed no antitrust concerns, the companies said in a statement. The deal still needs clearance in Brazil and China and the companies "anticipate