Smugglers make a logistics error
In a bizarre turn of events, employees at five Aldi branches in Berlin and one in Brandenburg discovered cocaine hidden in fruit boxes they were unpacking. A total of 140kg of the drug was unearthed by Berlin Police.
The current theory is that the cocaine came from Colombia to Hamburg by sea first, was then transported by lorry to Berlin, and that smugglers’ cargo through a transport error ended up in Aldi branches.
Aldi has declined to comment due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.
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The hidden cost of water
Professor Tony Allan of King’s College London, is an expert on social and political water issues. Asked for comment in a recent article by the Independent, he criticized supermarkets and food producers for not being made to account for, or record officially the amount of water used throughout their supply chains. Currently, food production makes up 90% of society’s water use.
He warns of the inevitable ecological consequences of water mismanagement, and points to agriculturally intensive countries such as India, which are already experiencing water difficulties in the North-west as a result of an over-reliance on irrigation. Naturally, other countries import goods produced in this manner without needing to acknowledge the ecological damage and the “cost” of water.
Although some progress with large corporations has been made, he has been actively lobbying ministers to make law amendments, to ensure accounting for water is obligatory.
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A surprising revelation
A recently released MIT study has shown the commonly held assumption, that the biggest supply-chain risks are connected with manufacturers using the most expensive suppliers, to be false. There is no connection with how much a manufacturer spends with a supplier and the profit loss it would experience should there be supply chain disruption with that supply. The opposite is in fact true, that the highest profit losses come when manufacturers use suppliers which supply relatively low-costing units.
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