CEVA Logistics is partnering with IBM and Maersk’s joint TradeLens blockchain-based platform that’s envisioned as a means of fostering collaboration and improving efficiency across the siloed shipping industry.
An open platform built on an ecosystem of industry stakeholders, TradeLens participants include more than 90 companies representing third-party logistics, port authorities, ocean carriers, rail transport and other interested parties. Though blockchain is still very much an emerging technology that enterprises are struggling to figure out, the tamper-proof distributed ledger technology is gaining traction in the shipping industry and in supply chain applications, where greater trust and transparency benefit not just stakeholders but end customers as well.
CEVA Logistics CEO Xavier Urbain said the newly forged cooperation serves as its “answer to the untapped potential of blockchain applications in the logistics industry.”
“We see high potential in TradeLens because of the real-time access it provides to all partners in the supply chain,” Urbain said, noting that IBM and Maersk’s platform represents a “big step forward” toward standardizing a blockchain solution for the shipping and logistics industry.
“With our integrated network in Freight Management and Contract Logistics, combined with our global footprint and state-of-the-art IT capabilities, we will contribute significantly to both our own digitalization strategy going forward and those of the industry,” Urbain continued.
CEVA said its TradeLens partnership marks another milestone on its digital transformation journey, with additional projects “in the pipeline,” which the company expects will be rolled out in the months ahead.
CEVA’s announcement is a positive development for the blockchain industry, seen by some as a passing fad but by others as a technological phenomenon as of yet emerging from infancy, with its great impact still ahead of us.