Agency of Canada border services (CBSA) and the second largest port in the country signed a contract to operate a blockchain-solution designed to streamline transportation.
CBSA and the port of Montreal will hold a test project TradeLens created by American technology Corporation IBM and the Danish shipping giant Moller-Maersk.
The project was launched by IBM and Maersk in the beginning of this year. Its goal is modernization of the shipping industry due to the digitization of paper documents, conversion to electronic processing, and billing and tracking of container shipments with the technology of the distributed registry. It is expected that full commercial operation blockchain platform TradeLens will begin at the end of the year.
While in IBM noted that the duration of the joint pilot testing with CBSA and the port of Montreal is not defined.
The President of the CBSA John Ossowski (John Ossowski) said that the ultimate outcome of the project can become “faster and more reliable national supply chain, which could have a positive impact on the economic performance of Canada.”
In August it was reported that the platform TradeLens was signed by more than 90 participants, among which the ports of Singapore, Halifax, Rotterdam, Bilbao, customs Australia, Peru and the Netherlands.
As noted by the head of the research group on the blockchain in the Center for transportation and logistics Massachusetts Institute of technology Borrell of INMA (Inma Borrella), the key to maximize the benefits of the blockchain-a platform can be global cooperation. However, one of the barriers is that the area of sea freight is very slow in adopting technology, she added.
“I wonder what all these companies are learning technology, but return on investment not yet evident”, — said INMA of Borrell.
Recall that the southern neighbor of Canada — US — border the customs service before the beginning of testing its own blockchain project certificate authentication. Recently completed its first phase and now comes the evaluation of the results.
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