[Music] standards-based electronic bill of lading. You're joining us today to speak about that important initiative. Thomas Bagger, CEO of the Digital Container Shipping Association. Thomas, it's great to see you. Welcome. Thank you, Russell. Thanks for having me. Thomas, for the benefit of anybody who's not entirely familiar with the Digital Container Shipping Association, walk us through for just a moment or two just what the DCSA is all about. What is its mission? So our mission is to help digitalize container shipping on behalf of our members. So our members count nine of the 10 largest container shipping lines um and we are their conduit to help them digitalize and provide an interoperable layer of data. All right. Well, now you mentioned these these member lines, these carrier members of DCSA and in fact it turns out that all of them have committed themselves to implementing a uh the standards-based electronic Bill blading or ebls by 2030. Now that's only six years or so away. Talk to us about this.

initiative. It's a very important one of the DCSA. How's it going? How is it coming along? What do you say? Yeah, so first of all, what we call digital trade is all about removing the barriers that we see today. So today, international trade is complicated. It's complicated between different jurisdictions. It's complicated because of Customs. It's complicated because of documentation, trade financing, and many other reasons. So hasn't that always been the case though? It has always been the case. How is it worse now, or is it? Um, I wouldn't say it's worse now than it has been, but it is the quantities with which we ship. Of course, it's magnifying the problem. And in the 21st century, we certainly believe the trade ought to be digital. Mm-hmm. And so in about a year ago, actually in February of 2023, we had a discussion with the carriers about what is our role in removing barriers to trade. And that is, of course, the electronic bill of lading that led to the statement. So clearly it

is a marquee initiative, if you will, of the organization. And of these carrier members, what's the status of things? Where are we in the pipeline, so to speak? So, we ended last year, 2023, with 3.8% of bills of lading being electronic. That was up from 2.1% the year before and 1.2% the year before that at the end of 2022. So, it's moving in the right direction. However, it is a long game and it is something that requires regulatory enablement. So, we are extremely pleased to see that the United Kingdom, as the first of the G7 countries, actually implemented the legislation to allow for the electronic transfer of documents. Well, now we just stated a moment ago that we're only about six years away from the date that you hope to be 100% vested in this. And yet, the percentage at this point is quite low. Yes, does that signal to you that there is less than a significant or real push toward digitization? What does that

tell you well, it tells me that they're going at different paces. First of all, certainly the members are MSC, as the world's largest container shipping line. They have more than 10% of electronic bills are rating at this stage, and there are others that have not really started an impact on that journey. It is also a matter of how their process landscapes look and the diff the business case between the carriers will be different. As an example, you have carriers that print the bill of lading at the origin and then airfreighted. You also have carriers that print at destination and don't airfreight. So one what we see is where the business case is the largest, they're moving the fastest. Well, you can certainly see the efficiency and the cost efficiency, cost reduction if that were all digitized from one end to the other. Next steps, what do you see as the next steps in this process? So we work with a lot of let's say international organizations like the

World Trade Organization, as an example, we work with a lot of governments, including the government here in the US, to try and say how can we push legislation. So that's, of course, one stream. It's regulatory enablement that needs to take place. A second step that we need to take is to ensure that there's interoperability. So you will know that the bill of lading has three functions. One is that it is a receipt of the cargo for the as you hand in the cargo. It is the terms and condition of carriage, and it's also a negotiable the document. And so there are challenges with technology in terms of how do you would you move one piece of paper that is actually the title of ownership from one place to another if it is digital and don't retain two copies. And so there's a lot of technical interoperability legal interoperability that we're working on at the moment. Now slightly different question here, clearly in the container shipping industry there are the occas there are challenges and there are the

occasional disruptions. We're certainly seeing something like that going on in the Red Sea these days, and we've seen that, uh, you know, time and again, you know, in the past. The role of the DCSA in terms of dealing with helping its carrier members deal with that sort of thing. How do you see that? Let's stay with the, uh, bill of lading example. What we saw during Co was that because planes stopped flying, bill of ladings stopped being, uh, being transported around the world, and that means that containers couldn't be gated out. Cargo couldn't be G out. That meant congestions, and it meant, at at at certain stages, that there were ports that could not allow, uh, more cargo to come in. So you can say digitalization is a, uh, as we see it, it is a, it's a mean to making this supply chains more efficient. It's a means to reducing the shocks that we see when shocks occur, and it's a means of also making the industry more sustainable. Well, let, let me just conclude with that question then because

let's amplify on that the role that you see of dcsa when it comes to improving the sustainability of the global uh supply chain. How would you characterize that so that there's no nobody would argue that digital provides the ability as we drive our cars to go around where there's congestions. The digital exchange of information between ports and container carriers feeder operators service providers at the ports is vital to reducing the carbon footprint and the greenhouse gas emissions that we that we see out there. So of course it it will still be a an industry that has large emissions until we we see a transition to Green fuels but there is something we can do Here and Now by deploying digital tools and reducing carbon footprint. Well clearly a very very important initiative toward achieving those goals and uh dcsa is doing a great deal of work in that area Thomas uh thank you so much for finding the time to speak with us today thank you thanks for having me Russell Thomas bagger with the digital container shipping Association talking with us.

today about standards-based electronic bills of lading. Thanks for watching.

The Road to Creating a Standards-Based Electronic BoL

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