10% stake for $200 million orders
FedEx has agreed to buy an ownership stake in the logistics technology vendor Berkshire Grey as part of a multi-year deal to stock its fulfillment centers with the tech firm’s robotic order fulfillment systems. Under terms of the deal, Memphis-based FedEx could buy 25 million shares of Berkshire Grey stock after it orders or pays for at least $200 million of Berkshire Grey’s artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robotic automation goods and services. That would represent a $61 million purchase worth about 10% of the company. FedEx in 2021 began to deploy Berkshire Grey’s Robotic Product Sortation and Identification (RPSi) systems to robotically sort small packages that arrive daily and require distribution. Those systems are now installed at eight sortation facilities. [DC Velocity]
8,000 disruptive events
California-based supply chain resilience firm Resilinc has tracked nearly 8,000 disruptive events affecting supply chains in the first half of 2022, a 46% increase compared to the first half of 2021. The data come from the company’s Eventwatch platform, an artificial intelligence-based (AI) tool that gathers information and monitors news on 400 types of disruptions across more than 100 million sources of information, including traditional news outlets, social media, wire services videos, and government reports. The top five disruptive events so far in 2022 are: factory fires, mergers and acquisitions, the sale of a business, leadership transitions, and other factory disruptions. Factory fires are up 131% year-over-year, putting 2022 on track for the most fires ever reported. [Supply Chain Quarterly]
