A late-night fire last month leveled a key part of a New York aluminum plant in hours. The Wall Street Journal’s Sharon Terlep and Bob Tita write that its absence will disrupt business at Ford Motor and other automakers for months to come. 

The plant’s operator, Atlanta-based Novelis, supplies about 40% of the aluminum sheet used by the auto industry in the U.S., according to industry analysts. Novelis said a major portion of its Oswego, N.Y., plant has been knocked offline by the Sept. 16 fire until early next year. Novelis produces more than 350,000 metric tons of sheet aluminum a year for the automotive industry. Ford is the biggest user of the plant, but a dozen automakers get aluminum from Novelis, including Toyota, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Jeep maker Stellantis, according to a regulatory filing.

The setback is severe enough that Ford will likely flag potential implications to investors when it discloses quarterly financial results later this month, according to people familiar with the matter. Ford said it uses several aluminum suppliers in addition to Novelis.

• President Trump said the U.S. will impose a 25% tariff on imported medium and heavy trucks beginning on Nov. 1, a month later than originally announced. (WSJ) 

The amount of vacant warehouse space in the U.S. held steady around an 11-year high in the third quarter, but it didn’t expand for the first time in three years as demand rose and the amount of newly built space continued to fall.

The average warehouse vacancy rate across the U.S. was 7.1% in the three months ended Sept. 30, unchanged from the second quarter, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield. The net increase in occupied space from the second quarter was 45.1 million square feet, up 30.4% from the so-called absorption figure seen in the April-to-June period, the commercial real-estate services firm said.

Meanwhile, the amount of warehouse space completed was down 14.6% sequentially at 63.6 million square feet, which is nearly 33% lower than a year earlier.

Rio Tinto signed a five-year deal with Canada’s Ideon Technologies to roll out technology that harnesses subatomic particles created by supernova explosions to help find and map deposits rich in minerals faster, cheaper and more accurately.

The Journal’s Rhiannon Hoyle writes that Ideon puts sensitive quantum sensors deep beneath the Earth’s surface to help miners map mineral deposits—as well as old mining tunnels, subterranean caves and potentially dangerous air pockets, among other things—using a technique known as muon tomography. The world’s No. 2 miner by market value will initially adopt the technology at six sites around the world, including a big U.S. copper mine.

• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the U.S. would take a stake in Canadian mining company Trilogy Metals, which holds interests in two Alaska mineral projects. (WSJ)

Retail sales in the eurozone edged higher in August, despite U.S. tariffs and political uncertainty. (WSJ)

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is due to meet with President Trump in Washington today, to discuss tariff relief on key sectors such as cars and steel. (WSJ)

OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices announced a multibillion-dollar partnership to collaborate on AI data centers, including a commitment to buy 6 gigawatts worth of AMD chips. (WSJ)

FedEx appointed Marshall Witt, former finance chief of IT company TD Synnex, as the CFO of spinoff company FedEx Freight. (Dow Jones Newswires)

Asahi Group partially restarted beer production and shipments in Japan after a ransomware attack last week. (WSJ)

EIG Global Energy Partners is looking to monetize its assets in the deep-water industrial facility at Brazil’s Port of Açu, while holding on to the property. (WSJ)

Exports of U.S. distilled spirits fell about 9% in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the Distilled Spirits Council. (WSJ)

Eli Lilly plans to invest more than $1 billion to build new contract manufacturing capacity in India. (Bloomberg)

Alabama’s Port of Mobile finished a project to make it the first Gulf Coast port deep enough to handle super-post-Panamax container ships. (Journal of Commerce)

Amazon said it will build a new, one-million-square-foot fulfillment center in a suburb of Indianapolis. (Supply Chain Dive)

Amazon resumed drone deliveries in Arizona after two crashes into a crane west of Phoenix, prompting investigations by the FAA and NTSB. (The Hill)

Shipowners confirmed a total of 22 orders for newbuildings last week, with Chinese shipyards winning most of the contracts. (Lloyd’s List)

One of two seafarers who were seriously injured in an attack on a Dutch cargo ship by Yemen’s Houthi militants has died. (The Maritime Executive)

BNSF Railway said a merger of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern would reduce competition and raise rates, and urged customers to contribute comments to regulators. (Sourcing Journal)

Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com.

Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.