Expertise & Clear Advice

Currently, there is a serious storm or even a hurricane ongoing in the ocean freight industry. Rates are at an all-time high (BCI’s monitor shows an average of factor 4, with outliers of factor 10!), capacity is limited which is strengthened by the false container positioning and port congestion due to Covid-measures and high demand is counted in weeks instead of days. The reliability of ocean freight is all time low which pushes the need for end to end visibility even further.

There is a lot of uncertainty about what the post-pandemic future of work will look like, there are quite opposing views with strong voices for “Keep working from home” versus also a plead for “Let’s go back to the office”. How are you going to make the strategic choices? Are they different for the various types of office operations you have? Which key factors have to be included in your considerations? Is more or less office space needed? And as a result; will your footprint and location strategy change?

The Netherlands is a major gateway to the European market, even in these unprecedented times. Many American and Asian shippers are using the Port of Rotterdam and/or Schiphol Airport to supply European customers, and have set up European Distribution Centers in the Netherlands. Many logistics service providers in the country are offering a wide array of activities/ operations to international shippers, ranging from simple transport, handling and storage to tailor-made value added operations.

SHINE Medical Technologies LLC has announced that it has selected the municipality of Veendam in the province of Groningen, the Netherlands, as the location of its European medical isotope production facility. The decision is the culmination of a year-long search process that included the review of more than 50 proposals from sites across Europe. BCI Global supported Shine Medical in its location decision process.  

BCI Global has made it for the third year in a row to the Forbes 2021 list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms. The prestigious business magazine Forbes released its annual listing of best management consulting firms. The economic, location and supply chain consulting firm BCI Global (Buck Consultants International) is the only specialized location consulting firm on the list and is also recommended by leading companies as one of the best supply chain management consultants.

European logistics real estate markets have not suffered last year from the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to fast growing e-commerce and higher inventory levels of producers the total expected take-up in 11 European countries of 23.6 mln sqm for 2020 is only 3% down compared with record year 2019. In major markets like Germany and the UK last year’s figures were certainly not bad.