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By Paul Page 

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The big food retailers are jumping into the grocery delivery competition. Grocery heavyweights including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Kroger Co. and Meijer Inc. are broadening delivery areas across the country and the ways in which customers get their groceries, the WSJ's Heather Haddon reports, scaling up in an area long seen as an e-commerce niche. A fifth of shoppers bought groceries online last year, up from 16% in 2015, according to a Nielsen survey for the National Grocers Association, and Nielsen expects the spending to reach $100 billion by 2025. There's also a critical defensive angle for the retailers: More than half of online grocery shoppers use Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime service for groceries, pressing the big store operators to fend off more encroachment from Amazon. They're meeting the logistics challenge by using outsourced operators like Shipt and Instacart, but it's unclear whether ceding control of the last-mile distribution will work over the long haul.

Planning for the Trump administration's $1 trillion infrastructure investment is underway, and road designers say the work can't start soon enough. President Donald Trump is pushing his White House team to craft a spending blueprint that would pressure states to streamline local permitting, the WSJ's Michael C. Bender reports, and would favor renovation of highways over new construction and prioritize projects that can get underway quickly. Mr. Trump said at a meeting with aides and some private-industry executives -- including Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk -- he is inclined to give states 90 days to start projects. The administration is setting the groundwork as infrastructure interests are sounding louder alarms over roads and bridges. The American Society of Civil Engineers, in its every-four-years report, gave U.S. infrastructure another failing grade and said the country needs to spend $2 trillion more than now planned over the next decade to get everything from highways to schools up to speed.

Israel's biggest shipping company has solved one big management question but now faces another. ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. named Eli Glickman to replace Rafi Danieli as chief executive officer, the WSJ's Costas Paris reports, leaving the veteran corporate executive to decide whether to sell the company or find a new way to compete against larger competitors. With just 1.4% of the global container shipping market, ZIM has been forced into a corner of the business by a prolonged slump in demand and unprecedented consolidation that's left smaller operators in precarious positions. ZIM is the only western operator which isn't a part of three cost-saving shipping alliances that start operating later this year, leaving smaller operators at a disadvantage. ZIM insists it can be more nimble on its own, but that may mean making tough decisions to get even smaller to sail outside the path of the big ships.

SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Lego A/S says it has fixed its supply-chain problems in the U.S., but is still missing a critical piece of the puzzle -- the final sales. The world's biggest toymaker by revenue reported flat sales in the U.S. for 2016, the WSJ's Saabira Chaudhuri reports, ending a painful year in which the company scrambled to repair bottlenecks in getting goods to stores. Lego expanded its factory in Monterrey, Mexico, to address what it figured would be higher demand in the second half of the year. But despite a significant jump in marketing expenses, sales didn't grow, a setback that suggests the lag in manufacturing and fulfillment left a lingering impact even after operations got back up to speed. Lego is still paying special attention to the North American operation. The company supplies the U.S. through that Mexico factory and has no manufacturing facilities within the U.S., meaning President Donald Trump's threat to impose a border tax could raise distribution costs.

German retailer Takko Holding GmbH and its investors are facing tough questions over a report that it used a garment factory in Myanmar that employed underage workers. The report by an independent Dutch, not-for-profit group says several factories in Myanmar had unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, WSJ Pro Private Equity's Jessica Davies reports, and employed workers below the legal working age. The fallout from the report is hitting Apax Partners, one of Europe's largest private-equity firms and Takko's owner, highlighting the difficulty that institutional investors have in enforcing ethical business practices across far-flung supply chains. Takko and its owners say they've stepped up oversight of their sourcing. But the nonprofit Fair Wear Foundation, which advocates for improved garment factory conditions, says the report highlights that apparel produced under fair-labor conditions "is virtually impossible to find...Clothing supply chains are too complex for that."

QUOTABLE

IN OTHER NEWS

U.S. crude prices for April delivery fell below $50, reaching the lowest level since last Nov. 30. (WSJ)

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose from a 44-year low but remained at a level consistent with a growing labor market. (WSJ)

Royal Dutch Shell PLC is selling most of its Canadian oil-sands developments, highlighting an exodus from the region by energy companies. (WSJ)

Staples Inc. will close roughly 70 stores in North America this year. (WSJ)

Signet Jewelers Ltd. plans to upgrade its online services and close underperforming stores after declines in both store e-commerce sales. (WSJ)

Emirates Airline says the original travel ban imposed by Mr. Trump caused its passenger bookings to fall 35% on U.S. routes. (WSJ)

New CSX Corp. chief Hunter Harrison says the railroad can grow by reclaiming freight volume lost to truckers. (Reuters)

Members of shipping's THE Alliance are setting up a trust fund to safeguard cargo operations should one of its members go bankrupt. (The Loadstar)

Volvo Trucks demonstrated truck-platooning technology outside California's Port of Long Beach. (Long Beach Press-Telegram)

U.S. highway regulators say they will not restore controversial limitations on truck-driver work hours. (Commercial Carrier Journal)

Ceva Logistics' fourth-quarter air freight volume grew 7.5% and ocean volume grew 8.9%, but margins weakened on rising shipping prices. (Logistics Manager)

The global fleet of liquefied natural gas tankers is expected to grow at nearly double the pace of LNG trade. (Logistics Insight Asia)

Kroger Inc. is adding a 674,000-square-foot distribution center in eastern Kentucky to serve the eastern U.S. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

A German state will sell its majority holding in Frankfurt-Hahn Airport to HNA Airport Group of China. (Air Cargo News)

Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC will establish a research center in Finland to study autonomous and remote-controlled shipping. (Helsinki Times)

ABOUT US

Paul Page is deputy editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Follow him at @PaulPage, and follow the entire WSJ Logistics Report team: @brianjbaskin, @jensmithWSJ and @EEPhillips_WSJ and follow the WSJ Logistics Report on Twitter at @WSJLogistics.

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Write to Paul Page at paul.page@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 10, 2017 06:54 ET (11:54 GMT)

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