May 2026

Aluminium Specialist in Focus

Posted on 2 May, 20261 May, 2026 by Paul Hamblin

An Italian-founded Industrial equipment manufacturer that offers a range of solutions for the logistics industry talks exclusively to our Paul Hamblin.

Alutec is a new name for many of our readers. Please tell us about the company: a short history, where you are based, employees, and most importantly, what you offer?

“Alutec is a leading Italian company based in Reggio Emilia, specialising in aluminium profiles, handling and transport systems such as conveyor belts, roller conveyors, assembly lines, and Cartesian robots for industrial automation. Founded by Giancarlo Maioli in 1993, the company employs around 50 people at its main site and has been led by Francesca Maioli as CEO since 2024.

“Alutec focuses on tailored end-of-line solutions across industrial automation, product handling, industrial dispensing, and robotics. What sets us apart is a customer-oriented approach: every project begins with a feasibility study, followed by bespoke design and dedicated after-sales support. The company is ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified for quality and sustainability.”

What are the qualities that have made Alutec grow so successfully?

“Our growth relies on flexibility, technical expertise, and strong customer focus. We do not offer standard solutions; instead, we carefully listen to each client’s needs to develop systems perfectly suited to their production processes.

“Designing components in-house and creating tailor-made solutions allows us to offer innovative, efficient systems capable of addressing dynamic market challenges while ensuring quality, reliability, and on-time delivery.”

What are the challenges that your customers are asking you to help them solve?

“Clients often come to us needing a solution with only partial information about the products to handle. Our challenge is to transform these details into a concrete, efficient, and reliable system, fully customised to their production needs.

“This process – rapidly understanding requirements, designing a bespoke solution, and testing it under real conditions – delivers tangible, safe, and high-performing results.”

You’re a very versatile company, with solutions across many areas. Can you give us an overview of your product range?

“Our range starts with aluminium profiles in 5, 6, 8, and 10-slot versions, complemented by a variety of accessories for flexible assembly. These profiles serve as a modular base for robust structures in industrial applications.

“We also offer handling and transport solutions, including conveyor belts, roller conveyors, assembly lines, and Cartesian robots. This extensive catalogue supports sectors from food and packaging to automotive and logistics.”

Which of your products is most appropriate for customers in the logistics industry?

“For logistics clients, our Cartesian palletiser is the ideal solution, allowing precise, fast, and safe handling of loads, optimising space, and improving warehouse and end-of-line efficiency.

“We also handle pallet transport, including heavy-duty systems with chain-driven or roller conveyors, designing installations for intensive pallet movement that ensure strength, reliability, and continuous operation under demanding conditions.

“Our offering includes conveyor belts, roller conveyors, and modular systems to manage flows of products of different sizes and weights efficiently, fully integrating into logistics processes.”

What are the advantages to customers when working with a company offering such a wide product range?

“Partnering with Alutec means working with a single provider who understands the client’s entire production process. This ensures better system integration, faster delivery, and more efficient project management. Clients benefit from coherent, compatible solutions that reduce complexity and enhance overall productivity or logistics efficiency.”

Partnership with customers is so important in modern business. Can you explain how you work with customers?

“We adopt a collaborative approach, starting with analysing client needs and production processes. We follow projects from design to installation and commissioning, providing continuous support afterward. For us, clients are partners, sharing challenges and goals to create effective, high-performing solutions.”

You describe your approach as solution-based, rather than product-based. Can you enlarge on this please?

“Yes. We start from client needs, not products. Each project begins with analysing processes, constraints, and objectives. Only then do we define the most effective solution, combining our expertise to create a system that truly solves the client’s problem and boosts productivity.”

You talk about ‘real’ solutions. What does this mean?

“Real solutions are systems that function effectively in everyday production conditions, not theoretical concepts or standard machines. They are designed and tested for specific client challenges, delivering measurable results in efficiency, safety, and reliability. Modular and flexible, these solutions can adapt over time as client needs change, integrating new modules without compromising productivity.”

You offer many products. Which is the best-selling?

“Our top-selling items are aluminium profiles, cut and drilled to specification, and Aluflex systems – slat or tabletop conveyor belts in various sizes. Profiles allow modular, customised structures, while Aluflex ensures efficient, reliable transport along production lines, serving a wide range of industries.”

Tell us about your latest innovations. What are your latest products for 2026 and how will they benefit customers?

“For 2026, we focus on enhancing flexibility and efficiency. The Cartesian palletiser is a key innovation, designed for sectors with strict standards such as food and pet food, combining millimetre-level precision, modularity, and easy integration into existing plants.

“We are also developing smarter systems with simpler programming, faster format changes, and improved performance, enabling clients to achieve faster, safer, and more efficient processes.”

Intelligent Supply Chain Execution with AI Agents

Posted on 1 May, 20261 May, 2026 by David Priestman

Infios has introduced a series of new AI capabilities that put the execution intelligence of some of the world’s largest supply chains within reach of organsations of any size. These new solutions power a modular, adaptable execution system where each component works independently, with decisions and actions coordinated in real time.

Supply chains are under more pressure than ever, but the systems running them weren’t built for it. As disruption accelerates, information flows, but action doesn’t, forcing teams to bridge gaps and react after the damage is done. Infios embeds intelligence directly into supply chain execution, where predictive, generative, agentic and conversational AI work together to anticipate disruption, drive decisions and act in real time. The result is a continuous sense–decide–act–learn loop that powers Intelligent Supply Chain Execution across workflows, not silos.

“Disruption is constant, and it’s expensive. This isn’t a cycle. It’s the new baseline, and legacy systems just can’t keep up,” said Ed Auriemma, CEO of Infios. “Supply chains don’t need faster reactions. They need a system that takes action, moving from manual intervention to automated action to execute without interruption.”

Integrating AI agents into real operational workflows

AI agents run inside Infios’s execution systems, not to replace them, but to orchestrate them, so a decision in one domain triggers coordinated action across all others.

Transportation Agents automate execution workflows, including driver check calls, via AI-powered voice agents that are triggered by defined conditions. This significantly reduces manual touch and manages exception workflows with full context.
Order and Document Agents capture, translate and validate unstructured documents such as orders and bills of lading, transforming them into structured data within live execution to eliminate manual entry. Shippers gain full inbound visibility, reducing dependency on vendors’ use of EDI or portals.
Warehouse Agents assist supervisors and operators by automating inventory research, issue resolution and real-time, tailored labor coaching based on associate performance and company SOPs.
Optimisation Agents identify the best route for a load or the optimal fulfilment option, then dynamically adjust in real time as conditions change, without manual intervention. When a carrier delay hits, picking falls behind, and order promises are at risk, Optimisation Agents evaluate inventory, capacity, and routing across systems, then automatically reassign, reprioritise, and re-tender in minutes without manual intervention.

Execution without interruption

Customers are achieving tangible results with AI, including:

Order release times reduced from hours to minutes at a global apparel firm
Backorders reduced by 70 percent in production environments for a US online retailer
Automated order entry achieving 83% autonomy rate for a leading logistics service provider
Disruption detection and recovery measured in minutes instead of days across all customers

“What makes Infios AI agents different is that they operate inside real workflows where decisions and actions happen every minute,” said Eugene Amigud, Chief Innovation Officer of Infios. “By embedding AI directly into execution, when something changes, orders update, warehouse work shifts, and shipments are rebooked in real time. That’s how AI moves beyond experimentation and starts driving real business outcomes.”

A practical path to real-time execution

Autonomy is not deployed on day one, it is earned. Infios AI operates within customer-defined guardrails and advances through graduated autonomy, moving from recommendation to execution as trust is established.

Stage 1: Assisted, where the agents recommend actions with clear rationale.
Stage 2: Automated, with Infios AI executing within defined policies.
Stage 3: Autonomous, where operational decisions are executed end-to-end within defined guardrails.

Teams can start with a single high-impact workflow like delayed shipments or order changes and expand from there as the system proves itself. Execution becomes continuous. Decisions happen faster. Responses happen automatically.

How Logistics can Navigate Europe’s Next Cycle

Posted on 1 May, 20261 May, 2026 by David Priestman

When demand softens, warehouses empty and rates fall across Europe, the instinct across logistics is to focus on streamlining costs. The recent fireside chat between Chris Roe, Managing Director of Amazon Freight UK, and Tamara Basic Vasiljev, LinkedIn’s Head Economist for EMEA, makes the case for a broader response.

For logistics leaders, they argue, the next phase in Europe will be defined as much by how we manage people, data, and collaboration as by how many trucks we put on the road.

Collaboration and intermodal as resilience tools

One of the strongest themes in the discussion is the value of shared solutions. Roe highlights how more shippers are looking beyond their own siloed flows and exploring how to align peaks, while combining volumes and using brokerage services to access larger, denser networks than they could build alone.

For operators and third-party logistics (3PLs), this is about more than marketing sustainability. Using intermodal where it fits can free up truck capacity for lanes where only road will do and make networks more robust when demand or fuel costs swing.

Competing for adaptable talent in a tight labour market

While networks are being re‑engineered, the workforce running them is undergoing its own transformation. Drawing on LinkedIn’s data, Vasiljev describes a structural shift in European careers: someone starting now might move through roughly twice as many roles over their working life as a counterpart who entered the labour market 15 years ago.

For logistics businesses, that churn can feel like a risk. But Roe’s experience suggests it can also be a strength if managed well. At Amazon Freight, hiring heavily weighs towards cultural fit and leadership behaviours, followed by structured training to build freight‑specific skills.

Vasiljev also states a shift in what employers are looking for. Across sectors, there is a growing premium on human‑centric skills: communication, cross‑functional collaboration, negotiation, and stakeholder management. In logistics, where every disruption demands fast coordination between transport, warehousing, customers, and suppliers, those capabilities often matter more than any single system certification.

AI in the control tower, not in the driver’s seat

Artificial intelligence is the third pillar of the conversation, and here the tone is pragmatic. LinkedIn projects that by 2030, around 70% of the skills listed in a typical job ad today will have changed in some way. For those working within the freight industry, that is less a threat than a signal that tools and workflows will keep evolving.

Roe describes how AI and machine learning are already embedded in Amazon Freight’s operations, particularly in areas like routing and network optimisation. Instead of asking humans to enumerate every possible path through a complex network, algorithms generate scenarios that planners can interrogate and refine. The technology does the heavy lifting on data; people decide which trade‑offs best serve customers and align with service commitments.

Both speakers emphasise that the value lies in this partnership. The organisations that benefit most from AI in logistics will be those that redesign roles accordingly and invest in AI literacy across operations and planning teams.

What this means for logistics leaders

From this chat, a few practical signals emerge. Firstly, collaboration is emerging as a pragmatic way to cut carbon emissions and strengthen service. Moreover, the combination of adaptable talent and AI‑enabled tools is becoming a core capability, not a side project, for anyone running complex logistics.

In short, the next chapter of European logistics is as much in control towers and planning tools as on the road. The conversation between Amazon Freight and LinkedIn is a reminder that resilience now depends on how well the industry blends collaboration, technology, and human skills to design supply chains that can absorb the next shock, whenever that arrives.

How Amazon Freight is approaching the next chapter

The conversation between Roe and Vasiljev offers a window into how Amazon Freight is thinking about the next chapter of European logistics: a market shaped by AI‑enabled planning, tight labour markets, and growing pressure to decarbonise road freight.

Amazon Freight gives shippers access to Amazon’s network of owned trailers and trusted carrier partners across the UK and EU, backed by technology designed to improve visibility, support real‑time decision‑making and reduce waste such as empty miles.

For logistics operators and shipping teams, that means plugging into infrastructure built to handle volatility as standard, while using tools such as online quotes, self‑service booking and shipment tracking to manage freight on their own terms.