India is set to enable shipping bills of lading (B/Ls) to be filed over a blockchain platform, as part of the nation’s efforts to digitize its maritime supply chains. These efforts have become more important as the paper-based administrative processes that accompany the coronavirus pandemic has severely hampered container shipping, and the following lockdowns and social distancing, leading to significant port congestion.

In reply, India’s ministry of shipping gave the go-ahead to run trial shipments with B/Ls and presented it on CargoX’s blockchain technology by the country’s Port Community System, developed by Portall Infosystems. And the associates declared today that the CargoX Platform for BDT (Blockchain Document Transfer) had been successful, and India’s global shipping stakeholders could carry electronic bills of lading.

As a consequence, CargoX and Portall have started an association to digitize the processing of bills of lading and transfer of trade documents by the P-CaSo services marketplace, combined into PCS 1x. As part of the test, Alejandro Gutierrez, founder of the new Forward Together logistics network, brought out a live shipment with DeeEs Engineers India Project, Tech Cargo, Global Transitions, and Parsteel Shelving Co/Atlas Mega Steel, replacing the manual handling of paperwork with a blockchain-protected bill of lading.

“The ability to conduct shipment transactions and transfers of ownership without the need for human physical interaction creates a breakthrough case for freight forwarding and logistics, especially when health measures are so important,” he said in a statement. Leif Arne Strømmen, vice president of innovation at breakbulk carrier G2 Ocean, said in a statement: “We are backing trade digitalization and were glad to provide testing and insight for the project in India with our partner, CargoX.”

“Because of the lockdown situation, we were unable to execute regular live shipments within the given narrow time frame. We successfully simulated shipments and processing based on real historic B/Ls, to provide complete insight into the future workflows and optimizations.” Stefan Kukman, chief executive and founder of CargoX, said in a statement: “In these times of multiple risks to our common society, we are proud to help shipping companies, which represent the backbone of the economy, resolve supply chain document-sending issues and enable them to meet delivery deadlines everywhere in the world in a secure and efficient manner, while also lowering the document transfer cost.”

Portall president Manish Jaiswal said in a statement: “We saw that there was a good fit between the companies. Both Portall and CargoX are fairly young, but the teams have domain-rich knowledge and bring expertise from various facets of the industry. This way, we are able to understand the needs of the customers well and provide the best-suited solution.”