CMA CGM and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company have announced that they are now successfully integrated onto the TradeLens blockchain platform created by IBM and Maersk, with the support of three of the world’s largest container carriers making the platform the de facto standard for global container shipping.
The two new connected shipping companies, together with Maersk, will act as platform foundation carriers and play a role in expanding the ecosystem and its operations, including acting as validators on the blockchain network.
Maersk, MSC and CMA CGM, together with the TradeLens network of terminals, customs authorities and 3PL and intermodal providers, will all be able to digitally collaborate by sharing documents and shipping data over the network, accelerating information exchange and removing a range of manual processes.
“Digitisation is a cornerstone of the CMA CGM Group’s strategy aimed at providing an end-to-end solution tailored to our customers’ needs,” said Marc Bourdon, CMA CGM Senior Vice President, Commercial Agencies Network.
“An industry-wide collaboration like this is truly unprecedented. Only by working together and agreeing to a shared set of standards and goals are we able to enact the digital transformation that is now touching nearly every part of the global shipping industry.”
The confirmation of the two liner companies as foundation carriers completes a process that has taken more than a year, requiring significant investment in new API capabilities. The work included a 15-customer pilot involving more than 3,000 unique consignments, 100,000 events and 6,000 containers to ensure the TradeLens platform can effectively distribute and share shipment data across various supply chains.
TradeLens members use the platform to connect within the ecosystem and share information needed for their shipments based on permissions, without sharing sensitive data. Data can be accessed from the source in near real-time, providing a data-driven overview as cargo moves around the world.
Launched in 2018, the ecosystem now includes in excess of 175 organisations, with more than 10 ocean carriers and approximately 600 ports and terminals. To date some 30 million container shipments, 1.5 billion events and roughly 13 million published documents have been tracked on the network.
“TradeLens is an important initiative in the digitalisation of global shipping and logistics, with the potential to help carriers and their customers to increase transparency and reduce errors and delays, all at a crucial time when the industry is re-thinking and improving the resiliency of supply chains,” said Andre Simha, Global Chief Digital & Information Officer, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company.
“By completing the integration, we can now begin showing our customers and business partners how they can create and see value from the platform, and we hope that many of them will join it, creating an even larger and more beneficial ecosystem.”
Source : Smart Maritime Network