TradeLens issues first electronic bill of lading in UAE

Safeline Freight and Fortuna DMCC became early adopters of the TradeLens electronic bill of lading (eBL) in the UAE, thereby accessing digital issuance, transfer, and surrender of original bills of lading using blockchain technology.

"Combined, the two companies move more than 7,500 containers annually in and out of the UAE," according to a statement from Maersk.

TradeLens is a carrier-neutral, blockchain-enabled digital supply chain platform jointly developed by Maersk and IBM. "The solutions offered by TradeLens are accelerating the digitisation agenda of the supply chain industry around the world by transforming manual, paper-based and time-consuming administrative processes into digital ones. TradeLens allows an original bill of lading to be digitally issued directly from a carrier and moved electronically through its journey with all the stakeholders. This reduces the hassles of sending physical papers from one stakeholder to the other through a courier process, eliminates the costly possibility of documents getting lost or forged, and removes inefficiencies from manual processes."

Ahmed Beyi, CEO, Safeline Freight, says: "I was amazed at how easy and fast I can control all my bills of ladings through the TradeLens eBL. Since this is a cloud-based solution, all my consignments and documents are available to my team and me on any device anywhere in the world. With the eBL now being accepted by major ocean carriers, ports, customs and a list that keeps growing, life has become easier for freight forwarders and our customers."

Varun Kulshreshtha, Regional Head of TradeLens, Maersk West & Central Asia, added: "TradeLens eBL is our latest addition to our portfolio of products in the UAE which also include visibility and document collaboration making the TradeLens platform a very compelling proposition for any company's journey to digitise the supply chain. The eBL has proven to be very popular with customers and in a few short years should become the default way of managing shipments in our region."

The TradeLens ecosystem consists of more than 1,000 organisations including major ocean carriers representing over two-thirds of the global market, and integrated with leading trade finance banks operating in multiple countries with a shared vision to help modernise the trade finance industry. The platform has already tracked more than 55 million container shipments, 4.7 billion events, and more than 25 million published documents.