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E-bills of lading threatened by lack of unanimity and interoperability
来源：shippingazette 编辑：编辑部 发布：2023/02/21 15:43:08
ELECTRONIC bill of lading promoters, the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), have admitted to a crippling problem of not having enough take-up to achieve universality needed for the scheme to succeed, reports London's Loadstar.
Simply put, for electronic bills of lading to work. almost everyone must be part of the scheme. Even a small minority outside the system doing it the old way is enough to destroy the new way, they said.
So while pleased that MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, HMM, Yang Ming and Zim have signed on to having 50 per cent of their bills of lading digitised by 2025, and 100 per cent by 2030, it is not enough.
IATA's head of digital cargo Henk Mulder explained, saying that even with 85 per cent on board that would not be enough.
"You would think that when adoption reached 70 per cent, you could get to 100 per cent in a few years. But no - instead it slowed down. Maybe the country doesn't like it, customs doesn't like it - there is always someone. So you will probably never get to 100 per cent, and that surprised us," Mr Mulder said.
Electronic documents are seen as an all-or-nothing step. Though the process may be slow, paper documents can be processed by anyone - operational flexibility stands to be lost if new types of eB/L are developed without interoperability in mind.
Ariaen Zimmerman, a consultant in logistics and software, and former executive director of IATA's Cargo IQ, said: "As long as markets haven't adopted the electronic standard, it is cheaper to run a single process. A major company may want to implement it, but when service providers are still using paper waybills, benefits are quickly lost.
"That service provider may be faced with local regulations that hold him back, or faced with other customers and other lanes that haven't yet shifted. In which case, that service provider now has to operate a parallel processes, paper-based and electronic. Since margins are too thin to allow these double processes, the adoption is delayed," Mr Zimmerman said.
Simply put, for electronic bills of lading to work. almost everyone must be part of the scheme. Even a small minority outside the system doing it the old way is enough to destroy the new way, they said.
So while pleased that MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, HMM, Yang Ming and Zim have signed on to having 50 per cent of their bills of lading digitised by 2025, and 100 per cent by 2030, it is not enough.
IATA's head of digital cargo Henk Mulder explained, saying that even with 85 per cent on board that would not be enough.
"You would think that when adoption reached 70 per cent, you could get to 100 per cent in a few years. But no - instead it slowed down. Maybe the country doesn't like it, customs doesn't like it - there is always someone. So you will probably never get to 100 per cent, and that surprised us," Mr Mulder said.
Electronic documents are seen as an all-or-nothing step. Though the process may be slow, paper documents can be processed by anyone - operational flexibility stands to be lost if new types of eB/L are developed without interoperability in mind.
Ariaen Zimmerman, a consultant in logistics and software, and former executive director of IATA's Cargo IQ, said: "As long as markets haven't adopted the electronic standard, it is cheaper to run a single process. A major company may want to implement it, but when service providers are still using paper waybills, benefits are quickly lost.
"That service provider may be faced with local regulations that hold him back, or faced with other customers and other lanes that haven't yet shifted. In which case, that service provider now has to operate a parallel processes, paper-based and electronic. Since margins are too thin to allow these double processes, the adoption is delayed," Mr Zimmerman said.