UPS’s venture capital arm, UPS Venture, has completed a minority investment in Arrival, a London-based technology company. UPS also announced a commitment to purchase 10,000 electric vehicles to be built for UPS with priority access to purchase additional electric vehicles. UPS will collaborate with Arrival to develop a wide range of electric vehicles with Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS).
Alongside purchasing new electric vehicles UPS has revealed plans to add more than 5m sq ft of new automated sortation capacity globally during the year, starting with the announcement of another ‘super hub’ and is investing $1.4bn in the renovation of in its Pennsylvania UPS locations dedicated to serving customers in the northeast corridor.
UPS has announced that it will be rolling out several new services and solutions specifically for its small and medium-sized business customers. New capacity, lane enhancements and more sort operations at several facilities will provide customers with more access to UPS Extended Hours service. The company has also expanded its Extended Hours service to include weekend pickup and delivery. UPS will also launch UPS My Choice for business in 30 countries and territories in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. UPS will provide customers with more access to UPS pickup and drop-off points and is intending to add a further 1,500 Package Express Centres (PEC) locations to the UPS Access Point Network.
UPS Flight Forward, the company’s drone subsidiary, will be expanding to the University of California at San Diego Health. In partnership with Matternet, the programme will launch in February on the UCSD health campus to transport medical products between health centres and labs. The drones will follow predetermined flight paths within visual lines of sight under the FAA’s Part 107 rules. UPS will also partner with Henry Schein Inc. to test the use of unmanned aerial vehicles within business-to-business operating models. UPS will soon also begin testing autonomous ground vehicles with Waymo to deliver packages from a UPS store location to nearby UPS sortation hubs.
Additionally, UPS has announced that it will be providing new solutions to improve operational efficiency via the initial rollout of routing technology ‘Dynamic ORION’. Introduced a new International Knowledge Base to simplify cross-border trade and customs and has partnered with Square Online Store to provide small and medium-sized companies within in-platform access to UPS services.
Source: UPS
