TradeLens Issues the First Electronic Bill of Lading in the UAE

Safeline Freight and Fortuna DMCC became early adopters of the TradeLens 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.

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.

Mr Ahmed Beyi, CEO Safeline Freight, commented, “I was amazed at how easy and fast I can control all my bill 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.”

He added, “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.”

The eBL technology developed by TradeLens provides a solution available to all shippers regardless of size or use case.

The elimination of physical hand-off of documentation accelerated during the pandemic, and the modernisation of supply chain infrastructure with the use of technology became even more critical.

The TradeLens ecosystem consists of more than 1000 organisations, including major ocean carriers representing over two-thirds of global market, integrated with leading trade finance banks 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.

Varun Kulshreshtha, Regional Head of TradeLens, Maersk West & Central Asia, said, “TradeLens eBL is our latest addition to our portfolio of products in the UAE. It includes visibility and document collaboration making it a compelling proposition for any company’s journey to digitise 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.”