Thomas Bagge

Carriers urged to follow banking’s digital path

Thomas Bagge, the CEO of the Digital Container Shipping Association, has had a very busy 2020

In the 14 months since he moved to Amsterdam as the founding CEO of the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), Thomas Bagge has been to the bank just once. It’s a point he makes by way of showing the path liner shipping is on to make booking a box a far more simple, online experience.

Bagge, a 13-year Maersk man prior to his DCSA appointment, relayed what carriers are doing to go digital and how so many archaic shipping practices should be consigned to the history books in an entertaining chat in June.

Bagge said carriers must aspire to get to the digital levels banks have done.

“The example I like to use is personal travel and banking, which has got so easy these days. Why shouldn’t we have the same vision for container shipping?” Bagge questioned.

Explaining where he believes the biggest digital advances can be made in liner shipping, Bagge said the focus should be on documentation, something his association has been busy tackling all year.

“I think the biggest gain is on the documentation side, the carriers have done a lot on the operational side, but from the customer experience, container shipping is still not great compared to other industries,” Bagge said.

In May, the DCSA made clear its determination to consign the centuries-old bill of lading to history. In a new report, the DCSA stated that moving towards a standard, paperless bill of lading will derive

“Eliminating paper from the shipping transaction will make every aspect of commercial container shipping better, faster, cheaper, more secure and $4bn in potential annual savings at a environmentally friendly ” 50% adoption rate for the container shipping industry

Since the first efforts to digitise bills of lading in the late 1990s, the promise of an electronic bill of lading for the container shipping industry has remained elusive. In fact, Tradelens, the Maersk and IBM blockchain platform, goes so far as to call an electronic bill of lading standard the “Holy Grail of global trade”. Like the Holy Grail, there are a number of obstacles on the road to attaining it.

“Eliminating paper from the shipping transaction will make every aspect of commercial container shipping better, faster, cheaper, more secure and environmentally friendly,” DCSA stated.

In June the association published IoT connectivity interface standards for shipping containers, potentially bringing greater transparency in the movement of goods around the world. The standards can be implemented by vessel operators and owners as well as ports, terminals, container yards, inland logistics providers and other third parties to ensure interoperability between smart container solutions at the radio interface level.

“With these standards in place, carriers and supply chain participants will be one step closer to providing customers with an uninterrupted flow of relevant information regarding the whereabouts of containers and the status of their contents at any point along the container journey,” DCSA stated in a release.

Back in January, the association published a common set of processes, as well as data and interface standards for track and trace.

Founded in April last year, the DCSA features the world’s nine largest carriers. ●

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