TradeLens was founded on a bold vision for global supply chain digitization as an open and neutral industry platform. This vision centered on the ability to enable true information sharing and collaboration across a highly fragmented industry globally.
Unfortunately, such a level of cooperation and support has not been possible to achieve at this point in time and A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) and IBM have announced the discontinuation of the TradeLens platform.
We would like to express our sincere thanks for those that interacted with TradeLens since 2018. We are honored to have been part of your digitization journey.
When TradeLens launched last year, it received plenty of business and trade-press attention. Now, as a pilot of TradeLens gets underway in Canada, the platform receives the spotlight for the role it is playing in real-world supply chain innovation.
Piloting in the Port of Montréal
In Canada, the French-language broadcaster, Radio-Canada, recently produced a segment for their weekly technology television show, Découverte.
TradeLens got the spotlight in an episode about the various implementations of blockchain (French-language, accessible to Canadian residents). The show focused on cryptocurrencies (the most common implementation of a permissionless blockchain), but the producers cleverly turned to a more concrete (if less-hyped) use of permissioned blockchain technology, right in the Port of Montréal.
There, TradeLens is being piloted with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA); Livingston International, a customs house broker and freight forwarder; CN Rail and a soon-to-be-named BCO in a six to eight-week pilot set to launch mid-April.
With its vantage point as the international container port closest to North America’s industrial heartland, and with direct rail connections, the Port of Montréal is the ideal proving ground for the end-to-end visibility and document sharing features of TradeLens.
The episode aired on Sunday, March 31 on Radio-Canada, at 6:30 pm. The show was rebroadcast the same day at 8:00 pm on the CBC news channel, then on the specialty channel, Explora. It is online via Découverte’s web page, as well as on Tou.tv (available in Canada).
Some other recent mentions
Harvard Business Review
HBR’s recent piece on how “Platforms and Blockchain Will Transform Logistics” highlights the changes digitization and platform business models will have on global supply chains. They call the recent advancements in the industry “a transformation that promises to be even more dramatic than the move to third-party logistics a generation ago”.
The Economist
London-based The Economist is a highly-regarded magazine and media company whose grasp of global trends and current affairs makes it a must-read for business leaders and technologists alike. So we were really pleased to see TradeLens mentioned in one of The Economist’s social-media video posts recently.
Entitled, “Can borders become invisible?” the bit briefly surveys some of the technologies that are making it likely that digitization will indeed change how borders work. It notes that customs documents are increasingly being handled digitally; it also cites the decentralized ledger of blockchain as a technology that can offer security for cross-border transactions. TradeLens is highlighted as one of the platforms in use in a number of ports around the world.
Forbes
In another piece of mainstream reporting, TradeLens is referenced (though not actually named, strangely) in a feature on how port and rail logistics businesses are exploring the potential for blockchain to drive efficiency.
As blockchain breaks free of its crypto origins, the commodities trading and shipping world is beginning to recognize and realize the technology’s potential, implementing it to great success and with tremendous future potential.
After the recent announcement that the carrier ZIM had joined TradeLens, numerous outlets picked up the news. We can recommend the technology reporting at JOC, which took the opportunity to look deeper into the development of the platform and raise some really interesting points.
We sat down with senior global trade experts, Diana Jones, Director of Solution Architecture, and Juanjo Ruiz, Strategy and Business Development at TradeLens to discuss the proliferation of electronic bills of lading (eBL) and the disruption of blockchain as an emerging technology with a substantial opportunity to support banks with unlocking a $3.4 trillion trade gap in the trade finance market. The following is a Q&A on these topics.
Citi Completes First Pilot Transaction on the TradeLens Platform in Asia Pacific
September 19, 2022
Bangladesh/Hong Kong – Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) Asia Pacific has completed its first pilot paperless trade finance transaction using the TradeLens platform. Leveraging blockchain technology supplied by TradeLens, the pilot illustrates the effectiveness of the technology to improve supply chain efficiency by significantly reducing document processing lead times.
.svg)
