There is a lot of talk in both technology and shipping circles about blockchain providing “visibility” to shipments and the global trade documentation surrounding them. Let’s think about that...
Some time soon (everything is relative!) blockchain platform/s will record all transactions related to a container shipment from, say, Asia to America and retain a record of all documents exchanged. All of this in a distributed, fraud-proof ledger. That, to me, is fantastic for traceability rather than visibility. It will provide visibility to all the transactions, but not real-time visibility of the container location, condition of its contents, etc.
“OK,” you say, “if I can see the transactions, I can see when they occurred and know the latest about my container’s location.” Well, maybe. For that transaction event to be current, every service provider, 3PL, ocean carrier, terminal, railway, truck, etc, etc, ... will need to fully complete transactions in near real-time. That is unlikely - each will have different internal processes taking more or less time to complete transactions than their industry peers.
Blockchain will provide traceability and transaction visibility way beyond that which is possible today. And that will be enough for some shippers. But, visibility and user experience expectations will increase rapidly as digitalization of the shipping industry takes hold. For true real-time geographical visibility, analytics and management control over the contents of the container, the shipper will need an IoT tracking and monitoring device on/in the container. Until smart containers with such devices fitted as standard are ubiquitous and there is an industry standard platform to merge data from all carriers, this level of tracking, monitoring and analytics will come from third-party service providers. There are a few of these - see my previous post for one good example (Arviem).
Real-time, IoT-based container tracking services and blockchain both have key roles in the digital container shipping industry. Working together, these brave new technologies will automate contracts (“smart contracts”) so that, for example, irrefutable demurrage charges and free time can be calculated and applied to invoices with confidence of both shipper and carrier.