Smart Containers — Disrupting ‘The Engine Of Global Trade’ Through A Decentralized Ecosystem
This is the fourth part of the Smart Containers series, where we will expand on the main features of Smart Containers and how it aims to disrupt logistics thanks to the blockchain technology. If you wish to read the previous part, visit this link.
When Richart Ettle and Nico Ros first sat down and started the Smart Containers project, they knew that something wasn’t right in B2B transportation of pharmaceutical goods and delicate products. With a lot of know-how and real life experience, these two bright minds behind Smart Containers figured out their competitive advantage and positioned among the leaders in this industry (something that we covered in the previous part of this series).
Adopting Blockchain To Disrupt An Entire Industry
As the idea of Smart Containers was brought to life, both of the founders saw the amazing disruption that their startup has in the current logistics market. As Richart Ettl, the CEO of Smart Containers describes it:
“Logistics is the engine of global trade. More than 17 million sea freight containers, more than 1 million air freight containers make 5 billion shipments happen.”
As Ettl explains, more than 200 documents are required or exchanged in order for one shipment to happen. In order to reduce this massive paperwork, Smart Containers aims to implement the blockchain technology with it’s distributed ledger and decentralize the individual documents amongst the network. By doing this, the paperwork can be reduced to little to none while individual entities still have direct access to the needed documents while also profiting from the non-changable and security attributes of the blockchain technology.
In other words, Smart Containers replaces people with technology. Their vision of the blockchain is as a technology that will tackle the flood of emails and generate the correct invoices — without any inefficiencies or complexity.
Creating A Decentralized Logistics Ecosystem That Streamlines A Lot Of Tasks
The decentralized nature of Smart Containers allows the startup to create an ecosystem that is open to all industry participants based on blockchain technology. Some of the documents that will be streamlined with this ecosystem include the following:
- Documents of origin
- Material safety sheets
- Airway bill
- Bill of lading
- Transport order
- Customs declaration documents & bills
- Invoices
- Product data sheet
- Storage conditions
- Transport conditions
- Multiple service provider billings
- Licenses
All in all, Smart Containers proposes a solution where each logistics unit will be mirrored as a virtual chip on the blockchain infrastructure. As such, all of the relevant parties will be able to link the required documents to the virtual chip and have them accessible to other related parties in the same process.
The documents will be stored on a public blockchain (like Ethereum) or a permissive blockchain — all depending on the sensitivity or privacy that is required. All of the information will be available in real time which enables parties to act quickly if there is any problem in the supply chain.
Compared to the current process that’s required to gather all those documents (and I talk from experience as I went through the process of importing and exporting various goods around the globe various times) this is a HUGE deal and advantage we’re looking at. If this is being implemented, the sole costs of the logistic processes behind the transportation of the goods will be minimized dramatically. This is another huge value proposition Smart Containers is currently trying to deliver.
If you want to learn about the Smart Containers coins, ICO token sale and other information, make sure to tune in tomorrow for the next part of the series!
