BlueX Trade helps ocean carriers go digital

FreightTech startup BlueX Trade is helping ocean carriers, including Evergreen Marine and Yang Ming Marine Transport, accelerate their digital transformation and mitigate impacts caused by the current global port congestion.

As the Omicron COVID-19 variant is fueling new infections worldwide, global logistics companies are facing challenges delivering traded goods once again. Maritime research consultancy Drewry has predicted that the global port congestion will continue and possibly worsen in 2022.

Although around 90% of the world’s traded goods are shipped by ocean freight, the industry has an extremely low level of digitalization, said Lance Lin, co-founder of BlueX. He said the company can improve freight efficiency by shortening the time that carriers spend booking freight from several days to 10 minutes.

Established in 2018, BlueX has offices in both the US and Taiwan. The company said basing its headquarters in Taiwan is strategic as the country boasts three of the largest ocean shipping companies in the world, including Evergreen Marine, Yang Ming Marine Transport, and Wan Hai Lines. By establishing a strong presence in the Taiwanese market, BlueX can enter the global freight industry more easily in the future, it explained.

Low digitalization of freight industry

Lin said companies in the ocean freight industry are doing things the same way as they have been done for the last two decades. Compared to the hospitality and aviation industries, the freight industry has yet to undergo a digital transformation and is still practicing the traditional ways of handling paperwork and tracking parcels, he pointed out.

Lin said communication between the shipper and the carrier can take up to two days and usually involves a great deal of paperwork, and numerous phone calls and emails. He said that ocean carriers are being fined for containers that linger in ports, and the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have begun charging carriers US$100 per lingering container with penalties increasing in US$100 increments each day.

Lin believes that these problems should and could be avoided. He said BlueX has built an AI-driven freight commerce platform to help ocean carriers improve operational efficiency and reduce human resource costs.

Booking freight could be as easy as booking a flight

By utilizing AI and big data, BlueX’s e-commerce platform digitizes the freight booking process and enables ocean freight companies to complete online pricing, sales, and payment more efficiently. The platform also has a dynamic pricing feature that enables ocean carriers to forecast shipping demand more accurately and maximize their spot market revenue.

Meanwhile, its standardized API can connect freight forwarders and ocean carriers to provide transparent and instantaneous freight information.

Lin stressed that data security is a big focus of BlueX and that its platform is secured with TLS 1.3 and AES-256 encryption. With shipping companies being hit by cyber attacks almost every day, BlueX aims to detect and deter the attacks before they occur, he said.

Expanding business from ocean freight to land freight

Lin said BlueX is dedicated to providing technological solutions to ocean carriers instead of operating a freight business. He said that the company has launched the GreenX digital booking platform with Evergreen and that the platform has attracted over 10,000 shippers and freight forwarders to sign up.

Lin said that there is great potential for the massive freight industry to go digital and that the business values of big data used in freight transportation are tremendous. He said BlueX is planning to strengthen its presence in the ocean freight market and begin extending its services to land freight or even air freight companies.

Lin expects the future to hold more challenges associated with climate change, geopolitics, and infectious diseases. He said that companies in the freight supply chain have relied too heavily on traditional practices and that they must learn to respond quickly and effectively under unprecedented conditions such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Alphaliner; compiled by DIGITIMES, January 2022

Compiled by DIGITIMES, January 2022