UPS Trade Direct expands shipping options to Europe

UPS (NYSE:UPS) today announced it had completed the rollout of UPS Trade DirectSM Air and Ocean services to facilitate export shipments from the United States and Canada to Europe.

UPS Trade Direct services streamline the supply chain by making it easy to move goods through customs that are destined for multiple locations but transported in one shipment. Trade Direct eliminates the need for client distribution centers in the receiving country for breaking apart freight shipments, minimizing handling and carrying costs.

This latest expansion follows the successful implementation of the service in 2004 along other major routes. UPS launched Trade Direct services outbound from Europe to the United States in January 2005 as well as inbound from Asia to Europe in June 2005. A ground cross-border service also is available between the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“Businesses of all sizes are recognizing that their success is closely tied to the effective management of their supply chains,” said Bob Stoffel, UPS senior vice president, Supply Chain Group. “And by using inbound and outbound Trade Direct services, our customers can efficiently accelerate trade along these key lanes between Canada, the U.S. and Europe.”

North America and Europe stand at the nexus of global trade. In 2004 alone, the United States and the EU exchanged $441.5 billion in goods*, while Canada’s two-way trade with the EU exchanged $62.9 billion**.

With Trade Direct, UPS customers in the U.S. and Canada now will be able to ship goods faster and more efficiently to Europe. The service offers a single point of contact, one shipping invoice and extraordinary supply chain visibility through UPS Flex® Global View technology, which provides tracking information at critical shipment milestones throughout the process.

Here’s how Trade Direct works:

Goods bound for Europe are individually packaged, labeled for delivery and then combined into one freight shipment. After moving by airplane or ship, the goods clear customs as a consolidated unit. That unit is then separated back into individual parcels or less than truckload (LTL) shipments, bypassing costly warehouse stops, and placed directly into the UPS small package system or into an LTL trucking line for final delivery.
As UPS handles the goods throughout this process, customers know where their shipments have last been scanned via UPS’s tracking and shipping notification technology.
For more information about UPS Trade Direct products, log onto pressroom.ups.com/tradedirect.