Hapag-Lloyd and Singapore-based Ocean Network Express (ONE) have completed integration onto the TradeLens platform—a neutral, third-party platform launched by IBM and AP Moller – Maersk to help modernise the world’s supply chain ecosystems—run on IBM Cloud and IBM Blockchain.
It’s been almost two years since the two carriers first announced plans to participate in the network, a joint initiative from IBM and Maersk. With their motives finally coming to fruition, it will help ensure a more timely and consistent view of logistics data for their containerised freight around the world.
“TradeLens technology holds great potential to help enable the digitisation of supply chain processes and documentation handling,” said Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd. “Our customers will clearly benefit from increased transparency, accuracy, speed and efficiency in their supply chains – leading to reduced cost.”
“We believe TradeLens can bring together all parties in the supply chain to the digital ecosystem where customers can get seamless, transparent and secure sharing of shipping milestones and trade documents. With its open standards and open governance, it can benefit our customers and the entire industry to drive for digitalisation and automation,” said Jeremy Nixon, CEO of Ocean Network Express.
Following the completion of multiple pilot projects as well as the integration, Hapag-Lloyd and ONE, the world’s fifth and sixth largest carriers respectively, are now working to help their clients and business partners across all major geographies benefit from TradeLens’ ability to increase efficiency and improve access to information. They join foundation carriers AP Moller – Maersk, CMA CGM and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) which have already completed their pilots and integration, along side five other carriers inputting shipping data into the TradeLens platform.
Additionally, TradeLens continues to rapidly on-board new organisations from across the shipping industry, recently adding shippers and importers including Van den Ban Tires which use the platform to address back office inefficiencies and improve the visibility of cargo.
Recently, KLog.co also became the first freight forwarder in Latin America to join TradeLens to improve efficiency, decrease operational costs and advance KLog.co’s goal of opening up international trade to all companies in the region, no matter the size of the business.
“A huge barrier to global trade has long been the inability for customers to securely share crucial information regarding the status of goods in an easily accessible and transparent way,” said Mike White, CEO, GTD Solution Inc and Head of TradeLens. “By addressing this problem, the TradeLens ecosystem has grown rapidly, and the onboarding of Hapag-Lloyd and ONE along with their customers helps extend the value of TradeLens across the entire TradeLens ecosystem, enabling connectivity to two-thirds of global containerised freight for all customers and other permissioned parties through a single platform. All participants benefit from reduced manual processes, while also streamlining processes from automation and improved forecasting.”
The TradeLens ecosystem now includes more than 300 organisations – encompassing ten ocean carriers and data from more than 600 ports and terminals. TradeLens has already processed 42 million container shipments, nearly 2.2 billion events and some 20 million documents. In total, five of the top six global shipping carriers are now integrated onto the platform contributing to the digitisation of documentation and automated workflows.
