News / 'Steady as she goes', despite need for speedy adoption of eB/Ls

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While the adoption of electronic bills of lading (eB/Ls) has increased this year, there are still big wins for world trade and for the environment to be gained from a more proactive approach, according to the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA).

Electronic waybills, of which eB/Ls are a shipping subset, remain a “prisoner’s dilemma”, according to Ariaen Zimmerman, a consultant in logistics and software and former executive director of IATA’s Cargo IQ.

Although electronic air waybills (eAWBs) have seen major uptake in air cargo – adoption over 80%, say some estimates – with some carriers like Lufthansa Cargo even introducing fees to discourage paper AWBs, the same is not true for shipping’s eB/Ls. This year has seen only around 3.2% adoption, up from 2.1% in 2022.

“It is a critical mass thing,” said Niels Nuyens, head of digital trade at the DCSA. “What is needed is for all stakeholders to stop waiting for one another to act.

“Many of the reports on trends in global trade specify a tripling in the extent of trade by 2050, and that being the case, we are going to need a system capable of dealing with that.”

Given that shipping carries such a significant portion of world trade, if paper bills of lading were not abolished by this stage, Mr Nuyens explained, there would be more worrisome environmental implications than just cutting down trees.

“Quite a lot of paper documents are being transported by plane,” he said. “During the pandemic, a lot of cargo was stuck in ports primarily because there were fewer aircraft movements to carry bills of lading from one end of the world to the other. In modern times, we do not need to rely on planes to carry paper documents.”

eB/Ls, in the context of digitalisation, have been criticised as a measure only likely to benefit larger carriers and operators, blending out the distinctive business advantages of small-scale, nimble freight forwarders.

But Mr Nuyens contended that the opposite was true. He said: “It really is not only about cost savings, it’s about being able and ready for trade enablement,” And, he added, eB/Ls represent “…easy access to global trade… for smaller carriers and freight forwarders”.

It would also reduce human error and the time it took to correct such errors, he said. “If something ends up on the paper B/L by mistake, surrendering it and sending it back is all very time-consuming. In the digital practice, it is a lot easier to change that. You will be able to have systems support.”

The DCSA’s vision of eB/L adoption is akin to that of e-mail, where the same email can be read on almost any device – mirroring the natural interoperability of paper waybills. However, not everyone is convinced by how this will play out in practice, with experts pointing out that it is not in the interests of platform providers to build-in interoperability with competing software.

TradeLens, Maersk’s attempt to create an ‘everything-app for shipping’ and included documentation folded spectacularly at the end of last year, after failing to grab market share – as well as, according to some legal experts, potentially falling foul of the EU’s Digital Markets Act, designed to challenge tech monopolists.

“DCSA’s standards [for eB/Ls] are technology-agnostic,” explained Mr Nuyens. “We don’t endorse any method or platform in particular – we collaborate with some platforms that use blockchain, and just as many that do not.”

Banks have traditionally been seen as the most resistant to eB/L adoption, he said, but that has either changed, or was a mischaracterisation in the first place.

“Many stakeholders have pointed fingers saying banks are not ready. But I have been surprised – we have found they are extremely excited about this. I can’t name any bank that has shown resistance to the idea of electronic bills of lading.”