ABN AMRO, the Port of Rotterdam Authority and Samsung SDS, the logistics and IT arm of Samsung, have joined forces to launch a pilot based on block chain technology to use digitisation to achieve more transparency and, particularly, more efficiency.
The ultimate goal is to complete, paperless integration of physical, administrative and financial streams within international distribution chains. The transportation, monitoring and financing of freight and services should be just as easy as ordering a book online.
‘Currently payments, administration and the physical transportation of containers still take place entirely via separate circuits’, explained Paul Smits, the Port of Rotterdam Authority’s Chief Financial Officer. ‘This results in inefficiency as many parties are involved and everything is organised via paper documentation. For instance, an average 28 parties are involved in container transport from China to Rotterdam. The transportation, monitoring and financing of freight and services should be just as easy as ordering a book online.’
With a help of pilot will be succeeded an open, independent and global platform that operates from the perspective of shippers.
The development of the pilot will integrate everything: from workflow management combined with track & trace to the digitisation of paper documentation such as waybills and the financing of handled freight or services.
It will be used the blockchain technology to create this system.
The pilot involves the multi-modal transport of a container from a factory in Asia to a location in the Netherlands. In the first instance, the pilot will be implemented by the three parties, but the cooperative network will then become open for other parties to join.
The pilot starts in January next year, and the results will be announced in February 2019.
