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This study presents optimization models for large vehicle routing problems using a spreadsheet solver and Python programming language with extended graphic card boosting computing power. Near optimality is feasible and attainable with spreadsheet tools and models for solving real-life problems. However, increasing the availability of additional computing power through graphics processing and visualization is now a viable option for decision-makers and problem-solvers. This study shows that decision-makers can solve vehicle routing optimization problems with limited access to high-end optimization tools. This study shows managers and decision-makers can use vehicle routing optimization even with limited access to sophisticated optimization tools.

Abstract On the China–Europe route, the sea used to dominate entirely continental transports, but in the last decade the railways started to gain some ground. However, it took number of years that railway volumes grew as significant, and finally coronavirus era (2020–2021) promoted much higher usage. This was the case not only on the main route Poland–China, but also on the more northern and lower-volume routes, such as Finland–China. This research uses regression analysis of the latter route to reveal factors that have an effect on rail container volumes. It is shown that Baltic Dry Index (BDI) and coronavirus related variables have influenced most container volumes on the Finland–China route. Oil price development has also played some sort of role. Interestingly, sea port handling of Finland does not play any significance in the model, nor does foreign trade between countries. Findings could be explained with the low starting ground of service, and dominance of sea transportation.

Background: The Middle Corridor, a transport route from Asia to Europe that also facilitates major energy projects through the Caspian Sea and its surrounding countries, has gained even more attention after the intensification of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022. Methods: On the basis of major scientific papers on the topic, foreign policy addresses from The Diplomat and studies by the United Nations and Asian Development Bank Institute, a framework with five aspects was created. In addition, two interviews with sector stakeholders were conducted to apply the framework and determine the relevance of the route to Finnish and Estonian economies. Results: A multifaceted overview of the current economic, political, and infrastructural state of the Trans-Caspian trade route is given. The practical value of the article lies in creating a framework for evaluating the route for related economies and testing this out for the Finnish and Estonian economies. Conclusions: Despite the challenges, there are enormous opportunities in this logistics route, especially with the restrictions facing Russia due to western bloc sanctions. Finland and Estonia, however, are suffering under the effects of war in Ukraine and the related sanctions, which has hindered the capacity to further enhance development projects.

Abstract This study analyses 98 Internet pages of sea ports located in Sweden, Finland and Estonia during years 2017–2019. Aim of the study is to find, how website basic design is completed (colours and languages), how slogans, environmental issues, statistics and hinterland transports are reported. Based on the analysis, it appears as rather common that sea ports follow conservative selection of colours in their websites, where blue and white are clearly most popular. Typically, English and Swedish are as the most common used language, followed by Finnish, Russian and Estonian. In some rare cases, websites are offered in Chinese or German. Larger sea ports do have clear “slogans”, where smaller ones are just having lengthy justification for their existence. Environmental issues are increasing concern among sea ports, and these are mostly mentioned in details within Swedish actors. Providing statistics varies among companies, and in some sea ports these are provided from very long time period, where in others from just previous years or then only from last year (or even at all). It is common for companies to report that they have sustainable hinterland access, railway available.

Abstract Emphasis on sustainability practices is growing globally in the shipping industry due to regulations on emissions from transportation as well as increasing customer demand for sustainability. This research aims to shed light on the environmental sustainability of companies involved in maritime logistics at the major Finnish seaport, HaminaKotka. This seaport is a part of International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Baltic and North Sea emission control area, with special emission-reducing measures contributing directly to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by mitigating negative impacts of industrial activity on environment and climate change. Two semi-structured interviews with companies at HaminaKotka were carried out to construct a case study examining the sustainability challenges at hand. In addition, experience of one of the authors in a managerial position at the studied seaport complex, as well as the sustainability communications of the companies situated in the area were used to support the findings. The companies improve environmental sustainability by using multimodal transport chains, alternative fuels in the transports, and environmental sustainability demands towards their partners. However, the most important measures, according to these companies, are transport mode selection and cargo load optimization. Moreover, companies have identified bottlenecks of cargo flow at the hinterland due to road infrastructure constraints. As regulations and customers are requiring environmental sustainability, companies are forced to renew their operations, strategy and business models. Especially, the emission-reducing regulations drive companies to implement means to control the produced emissions.

High-speed railway (HSR) network building was initiated in China in the early 2000s, and full-scale construction began several years later as a larger use phase started in 2008. Thereafter, the expansion speed has been impressive. Network investment could be considered as a success, if evaluating the amount of high-speed railway usage already during the expansion phase. The diffusion models built in this research show that expansion in the network and growth of the passengers will continue at least until the following decade. The performance is evaluated in terms of DEA efficiency model. It is shown that efficiency started from very low levels, but it has been increasing together with the expansion of HSR network. Currently, the efficiency is near the level of the leading European High-speed (HS) countries (Germany and France). However, it is projected with linear model and by Bass diffusion models that the efficiency will reach Japanese and South Korean standards in the next decade. A somewhat larger network length with smaller relative growth of passengers, but with a higher growth of passenger-km seems to be able to reach even the frontier efficiency.

Abstract E-commerce is experiencing strong global growth, and leading market is nowadays that of China, whether it is evaluated from the perspective of domestic market size or cross-border volumes. In this research work further understanding and knowledge is built from Chinese market using general choice algorithm (GCA) and two real-life case studies. The outcome of GCA model shows the list of the most preferable locations for e-commerce enterprise development. Findings of this study are also compared to two case studies of e-commerce entrance to Chinese market, where one of these two is operating in an omnichannel environment. Market entrance in these two was implemented through very simplified and centralized distribution structure, and using location of Shanghai. Actual operations are either outsourced or in-house produced. Cash on delivery (COD) is still the preferred payment method in e-commerce order fulfilment. One factor being rather important in case companies was distribution prices, where courier services all over the country play an important role. For logistics in general, and sea ports, research reveals that currently dominating areas of the Pearl and Yangtze River Delta face the challenge to some extent from other places of China as favourable locations for e-commerce and consumption are also at north and western parts.

Earlier in Europe, there existed many local textile brands and manufacturers. However, these have experienced significant pressure from the rapid expansion, and success of the European based global textile industry corporations, such as H&M and Inditex (Zara). Their further advancement is supported by the expansion into the new locations and application of nearshoring strategies to the favourable markets, such as Russian, which have attracted to some extent previously entirely offshored European manufacturing located in China. In this regard, the objective of the current study is the assessment of the business activities of the given companies, as well as one company from Finland, and three major textile companies from the Baltic States, through the designed methodological approach. Due to the fact that most performance indicators of companies are based on empirical data, the study is explorative in its nature. Moreover, it shows the relationship between the main key performance indicators of the company with one of the functional areas of logistics (warehousing and inventory management). In particular, analysis of this research shows that two global actors (H&M and Inditex) have experienced exceptional growth, profits and profitability during the years 2001-2016. It was concluded that nearly all of these earlier successful ones and smaller actors have faced difficulties in the past decade, and best growing has been company concentrating on warehousing and retail, instead of manufacturing. Most of these smaller actors have faced profitability challenges, and considerable amount of shareholder value has been lost during the decade.

For decades, trade between Europe and China has grown consistently, which has resulted in increased container transportation volumes. Such transportation has been dominated by sea-based options. However, over the years, an air-based mode of transport was developed, while it has lately become increasingly popular to use railways utilizing the Trans-Siberian land bridge. This latter approach boomed amid the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. However, the railway container boom in Eurasia has deeper roots than just the COVID-19 era. As is illustrated in this research work, international trade containers (trade between Russia and other countries, mostly China) and transit containers (e.g., serving the Chinese–EU route) were already showing some significance as early as 2003–2004. In 2020, their volume was already measured in the millions, regardless of the railway data source being used. This is well above the starting period in the 1980s and 1990s, when total annual volumes were around 0.1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). Container capacity has developed over the years, first being used for international trade and only lately for transit. As a preliminary comparison to air freight, the growth rate was roughly double that in the two-decade observation period.

Purpose: Retail sales growth has been sluggish in the recent decade in North European countries. Number of factors have caused this, like problems in macro-economy, sanctions and the effect of ageing population. Also increasing amount of e-commerce from China has taken its share. Future development paths need to be researched further to identify the outlook of North European retail. Methodology/Approach: Four different imported items were examined, which were hypothetically planned to be brought on Estonian consumer markets from China. We take into account freight costs, custom duties, VAT and profit margin requirement. Also lead time performance is being examined. Findings: Analysis shows that company based imports is not that viable model as profit margin requirement as well as governmental costs (duty and VAT) take lion share from overall costs. Even if profit requirement of company importing the products would decrease, wage inflation in Asia and freight will probably lead to higher product prices. Therefore, e-commerce needs to enlarge to lower cost manufacturing locations and/or use more direct sales to consumers. Total lead time soughts new solutions too (e.g. railway connection to Europe). Research Limitation/implication: Examination is limited to small Estonian market, and their custom tariffs and VAT. Also logistics costs to Northern Europe are higher than to Central Europe. Originality/Value of paper:Research is one of the first based on the examination of products and overall costs. It adds value through understanding of import cost structures.

Nearly the entire European trade of Finland is being executed through short sea shipping connections to Estonia, Sweden and Germany. Earlier the most important connections were to Sweden and Germany, but during Estonia’s new independence era, volumes to this alternative direction have increased considerably, and are continuously growing (time alone is good proxy for growth). This cannot be said for transport flows to Sweden, and Germany also holds high uncertainty. Based on the findings of this research, it is argued that Estonian connection growth was caused by different factors. One important factor was European Union membership in the year 2004. It should be emphasized that this was step-wise and was realized a decade ago. The main influence is that of the development of bulky trade. As measured in weight, both export and import of Finland with Estonia was found to be significant. However, in monetary terms only Finnish imports from Estonia was statistically significant. Finnish exports in turn to Estonia in value terms have contributed a negative effect (or even being insignificant). As the regression model was expanded, taking into account all three Baltic States and Poland, reliable additional findings couldn’t be drawn. Completed regression analysis shows that the explanation power of GDP based models became much lower after the years 2005‒2006.

The Baltic Sea shipping is at a crossroads as sulphur regulation will lead to excessive cost increases from the year 2015 onwards and CO2 emission trading is planned to be implemented for the entire shipping sector within the EU area. Therefore, shipping is going to be minimized and hinterland transportation (road and rail) will act as substitute. This research analyzes the situation on one of the highest volume general cargo transportation routes of Finland (operating between Helsinki, Finland and Tallinn, Estonia), including loading and unloading at seaports and short sea shipping activity in between. Based on the efficiency evaluation results, it seems that containers should be favoured over semi-trailers – containers could be carried efficiently either in container ships or even at currently favoured RoRo or RoPax ships. Our research illustrates that pure container shipping with larger container ships within the analyzed route is not entirely out of question, but lead time and hinterland operations should receive more attention. Alternatively, RoRo and RoPax ships can also do something to increase their competitiveness in environmental harm caused and diesel consumption – higher cargo loads and utilization levels are short-term key for continued dominance.

Manufacturing employment has continuously declined in developed economies for more than decade time, but service sector in turn has significantly grown. Services also include warehousing, which connects customers and globally concentrated manufacturing units together. In this manuscript we examine location criteria for warehouses in Northern European companies (Finland and Sweden) as well as location of their warehouse network in larger Europe. Our research shows based on multiyear survey that primarily warehouses are established to have: (1) low distribution costs, (2) road transportation connection, and (3) assembly/manufacturing units are near-by. Currently in different contexts is being emphasized intermodal transports, railway connectivity, future potential of location as well as low labour cost are considered to have secondary up to quinary importance. In country level differences we show based on completed surveys that Finnish companies are more active in Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), while Swedish companies have been extremely cautious with this regard.

Export led economies of Slovakia and Czech Republic have shown impressive performance on activity regarding to Rail Baltica corridor countries (trade vol. incr. by 200-300 % in decade time). However, long-term plans in transportation logistics are tied upon corridors (road and rail) ending to Polish sea port, Gdansk. Road transport is also favoured in large-scale in both countries in export activity. However, new environmental demands (sign. lower emissions) and scarcity of oil are on the way of changing the current modus operandi. As trade of Rail Baltica countries accounts for one third of these two countries, and is constantly growing with surplus (except for Russia), Slovakia and Czech Republic are clearly in need of developing own strategy for Rail Baltica.