A.P. Moller-Maersk (Maersk) has announced the first significant expansion of TradeLens into China after it signed a partnership with China Unicom Digital Tech, a subsidiary of China Unicom.
In a statement, the carrier said the roll-out will ensure the provision of fully integrated, real time and consistent view of logistics data for containerised freight around the world. TradeLens is a blockchain-enabled digital container logistics platform, jointly developed by Maersk and IBM.
As part of the collaboration, China Unicom Digital Tech will host and operate TradeLens in Chinese Mainland, making it available to global exporters and importers in China, along with other supply chain partners.
Maersk estimates that one in three export containers is exported from China and one in six imported containers is imported into China. Consequently, the partnership connects the country to the TradeLens platform and further enhances the network coverage of TradeLens global services.
Haifeng Chen, President of China Unicom IOT Research Institute and Vice President of China Unicom Digital Tech said, “This year marks the inaugural year of the 14th Five-Year Plan.
“As a major use case in the critical digital transformation period, the upgrade towards digital shipping and logistics industry will facilitate the country to build the dual circulation development pattern.
“By joining force with TradeLens, we may optimize our strength on cyber security, data security and transaction security. Leveraging with the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and other technologies, we will achieve logistics service standardization, visibility and intelligence, and help build a connected, trustful and highly efficient logistics network.”
Launched in 2018, the TradeLens ecosystem now includes direct integrations with more than 300 organizations – extending to more than 10 ocean carriers and encompassing data from more than 600 ports and terminals.
Already it has tracked over 35 million container shipments, close to 2 billion events and roughly 16 million published documents.
Caroline Wu, Managing Director of Greater China, Maersk, also commented, “The industry has reached another important milestone with TradeLens now live in China, an economy at the center of the world’s largest trade lanes.
“Our customers need enhanced visibility more than ever to drive efficiency and resilience and they require digital solutions to handle trade documents to help reduce the disruptions created by the global pandemic. TradeLens will provide new tools to facilitate industry innovation and help our customers accelerate their digital agendas.”
Xin Li, Vice President, Industry Business Development, IBM Greater China Group, was quoted as saying, “TradeLens brings together logistics data and digital workflows to improve the efficiency of customer supply chain efficiency.
“The growing interest in TradeLens from Chinese companies is a strong indication of how the growing complexity in the container shipping industry demands the use of advanced technologies such as blockchain and hybrid cloud to driver greater efficiency in the highly dynamic market.”
