Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) has incorporated in Hong Kong after securing the requisite regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions, and has officially started its operations to help accelerate the Digital Transformation of the Shipping industry.
GSBN has been established on a not-for-profit basis to enable stakeholders involved in global trade to increase delivery reliability, streamline operations, and embrace digital transformation. Its shareholders are comprised of global Carriers and Terminal Operators: COSCO SHIPPING LINES, COSCO SHIPPING PORTS, Hapag-Lloyd, Hutchison Ports, OOCL, SPG Qingdao Port, PSA International and Shanghai International Port Group.
GSBN aims to enable and accelerate the digital transformation of the shipping industry, through the setup of a Data Exchange Platform, which will enable the shipping industry to improve its resilience by:
- Facilitating better digital connection and collaboration between stakeholders
- Improving the visibility to enhance sustainability and reliability of operations
- Creating a data utility platform to unlock the value of digital transformation for all
Martin Gnass, Managing Director IT of Hapag-Lloyd, stated:
The foundation of GSBN symbolizes an important milestone towards establishing an industry-wide, secure, digital collaboration platform that aims to benefit all parties in the global supply chain. GSBN will accelerate the sharing of verified logistics and cargo data, streamline business operations across the whole supply chain, and create value to each stakeholder
Leveraging Blockchain technology, GSBN will provide a platform to enable its users to exchange first party, real-time, and trusted logistics data. The platform will provide a better user experience, enabling industry players to interact with data and redefine legacy processes.
Additionally, the platform has strong data governance, to ensure that only authorised parties are granted access rights to view and use the data. Data submitted to GSBN’s platform are encrypted with private keys, and the data access rights are managed at the data field level.
In the future, GSBN will establish a framework with all stakeholders to share the benefit derived from data products built on top of the platform using their data.
During the preparatory phase of GSBN, the founding members have carried out various proofs of concept in China and Southeast Asia to show the value of products built on top of the platform. As a result, GSBN intends to pursue the deployment of “Cargo Release” as its first product.
The Cargo Release pilot has enabled hundreds of our customers to eliminate their current manual steps and remove the need for any physical exchanges of paper documents. This not only reduced the overall time from 2-3 days to 1-2 hours, but also provided health benefits with regard to COVID-19
noted Kenny Ye, Deputy Managing Director of COSCO SHIPPING Lines and COO of OOCL.
