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China Ocean Shipping Container Line (Coscon) has completed its systems integration with CargoSmart, the online trade management portal engineered by Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL).

Coscon went live with CargoSmart yesterday, potentially tripling container-related interactions on the portal.

NYK Line, Japan's largest carrier, and Malaysian International Shipping Corp are still undergoing the compliance process, with both expected to go online before the end of the year.

The move means Coscon customers will now potentially be able to online manage, track and trace the four million teu (20-feet equivalent units) the firm annually moves.

Commercially, Coscon plans to implement the Iris-2 back-end system, to which CargoSmart is connected, in stages.

Its North American and Asian trade will be online by the end of this year and Europe-linked cargo by the first quarter next year.

Transpacific trade represents about 50 per cent of Coscon's shipment volume and it moved roughly 4.2 per cent of the world's box trade last year.

Services immediately available are the company's sailing schedule, cargo tracking and rail tracing on the public page of CargoSmart, which managed about 200,000 shipment activities a day before bringing Coscon aboard, according to CargoSmart chief executive Steve Siu.

'One of the challenges of the transportation industry is that carriers and shippers have varying levels of technical capabilities. CargoSmart is working on bridging that gap by providing a common platform any carrier and shipping party can use,' Mr Siu said.

'The supply chain management space is enormous. It has many different areas where technology can be applied to make the transportation business more efficient and effective, and it does not have one clear leader yet.

'The heart of CargoSmart's business is helping the shipping community to collaborate and manage their entire shipment cycle transaction online.'

NYK late last month surprised the industry by opting to make online management of its container volumes available on three of the industry's leading portals: CargoSmart, GT Nexus and Inttra.

GT Nexus, which aside from offering an industry portal also provides multinationals with dedicated trade management software solutions, is targeted at shippers, the carriers' customers.

Earlier this month GT Nexus added Mitsubishi to its client base, which also boasts Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, Itochu and China computer component manufacturer Envision Peripherals.

Fifteen of the world's leading carriers are either shareholders in or members of Inttra. Combined, they represent 46 per cent of the world's container carrying capacity, according to the company, 55 per cent of whose shipments originate in Asia.

While Mr Siu admits that, on the surface, his competitors appear to be attracting high-profile customers at a faster pace, he said more than 2,000 companies regularly used CargoSmart.

He also stresses that carriers such as Maersk Sealand and NOL Group subsidiary American President Lines market their own proprietary Web sites, even though they join industry portals.

Because OOCL and Coscon are dedicated to CargoSmart they promote the use of it, keeping operating costs lower than at sites which must self-promote.

'I could drop our rates and make life hard for GT Nexus and Inttra, but now is not the time. Those products are helping to promote the industry, that having one portal through which to manage your cargo is beneficial. They are helping build awareness, ' Mr Siu said.

'This is why I see Maersk.com and APL.com as our competitors, not Inttra and GT Nexus.'

He would not be drawn on why carriers would invest in a portal they do not promote, saying 'you'll have to ask them'.

But one industry executive said some carriers might have taken stakes as a defensive investment 'to keep venture capitalists [VCs] out of the market'.

'They were building a fence around the industry which they thought the VCs may try to commoditise. They didn't want to see non-shipping executives running industry portals for profit,' the executive said.

OOCL would phase out OOCL.com this summer, said Mr Siu, who claimed his customers had chosen CargoSmart, which is managed by Hewlett Packard, as their preferred site.

CargoSmart is cautiously integrating NYK's back-end systems into its platform, and Mr Siu says it probably will not be done as quickly as Inttra.

'We are looking for a pace NYK feels comfortable with towards compliancy. I'm not in hurry. I want to be sure they look good,' he said.



Coscon online with CargoSmart business portal