At the turn of the year, APBA underwrote a partnership agreement with IBM to take part in TradeLens: an open and impartial platform based on a blockchain technology solution that had been the brainchild of IBM and Maersk. Its aim is to enhance transparency and visibility throughout supply chains.
The co-working platform, launched at the beginning of 2018, should enable safer and efficient data and documentary exchange that would promote the partnership and trust of its participants throughout the global supply chain. Ultimately, the aim is to set up the foundations for supply chain digitalisation to add value to each of the different logistics players: from shippers, forwarders, logistics businesses and shipping lines to authorities and public agencies.
TradeLens has already successfully acquired a significant critical mass. By the end of 2019, this solution had already won over the membership of 175 organisations, among them maritime and land shippers, Customs authorities, major forwarders, and more than twenty ports (among them, Rotterdam, Montreal, Valencia, Tanger-Med and Bilbao) and terminal operators (PSA Singapore, APM Terminals and Patrick Terminals) worldwide.
Huge companies like Dow Chemical, DuPont and Tetra Pak have also opted to join the platform to harness the multiple benefits the tool offers them, such as process efficiency gains, heightened trust and transparency with their partners.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the appearance of supplementary networks, like the Blockchain platform recently announced by the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) consortium, can only confirm the belief that the TradeLens initiative is sound and that this type of technology is gaining momentum in the global supply chain.
TradeLens enables a myriad of companies to work together in a standardised way that makes up a solid, interconnected network where each member can guarantee the confidential and secure nature of their own data when they upload transaction details to the platform. By the turn of 2020, the platform was posting more than two million events a day.
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