Several major Turkish shipping operators have joined IBM and Maersk’s shipping platform named Tradelens which is designed to help the supply chain industry. Tradelens is a blockchain-based shipping service based on the Hyperledger fabric, an enterprise blockchain solution that is being developed and promoted by IBM itself.
Tradelens was conceptualized back in April 2018 after an agreement between IBM and Maersk which is one of the biggest shipping companies in the world with hundreds of thousands of containers in transit all the time along the busiest trading routes and ports around the world.
Tradelens works on open-source API jointly developed by IBM and the shipping giant. It allows shipping companies and ports to record immutable data on a permission-based blockchain interface. This platform has been in development for some time and is now being adopted by shipping companies around the world. Now Turkish giant YILPORT Holding which operates several busy terminals both on land and sea. It is reported that Gebze and Gemport terminals will be among the first in the country to adopt the Tradelens platform for effective shipping procedures backed by the immutability of blockchain.
IBM is putting a lot of effort into its blockchain shipping platform. This is a class of enterprise blockchain solutions that do not have a cryptocurrency attached to them as of yet. It is just like using an enterprise management system for your operations except that there is decentralized ledger technology aka blockchain at the back end.
With Tradelens, shipping companies are looking to reduce their operational costs while simultaneously increasing their efficiency and help cut losses. The shipping industry is a trillion dollar industry with most of the trade around the world being carried out through the seas. The industry has several large stakeholders including ports and terminal handlers, shipping containers manufacturers and shipping freight operators. Due to the nature of the industry, the operations are quite complex and there is always plenty of room for improvement.
In addition to IBM, other organizations and companies are developing and promoting the use of blockchain technology and its immutability for the shipping/ supply chain industry. The latest edition of World Economic Forum also highlight the technology’s use in supply chain management with a particular focus on increasing efficiency and reducing wastage. This is especially going to be important in the future as the Coronavirus pandemic has wrecked havoc on the existing supply chain systems and massive improvements are needed by companies to remain competitive. Companies like IBM and Maersk are therefore investing heavily in the sector.
Image source: pixabay.com
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