Blockchain CargoX to take over former IBM Tradelens customers in MENA

CargoX, the provider of the fastest-growing electronic trade document platform, and CEBS Worldwide, a global integrator of business solutions and a former TradeLens integrator, launched a partnership to help corporations continue the digitalization of their bills of lading and trade document workflows even those in the MENA region. 

Businesses that started using TradeLens for their eB/L have been scrambling to migrate their electronic trade document processing to a new platform since TradeLens unexpectedly announced the end of its service in December 2022. 

While TradeLens was able to onboard global carriers — CMA CGM, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., Hapag-Lloyd, Ocean Network Express and Zim Integrated Shipping Services — it announced in November 2022 it would shutter due to a lack of a path toward profitability. TradeLens was also piloting projects in Oman and KSA. 

Saudi Customs, in partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the General Authority of Ports, and Maersk International Company, one of the founders of Tradelens had announced in 2019 the successful Blockchain pilot and the importance of blockchain technology in the shipping industry.

In addition Oman’s Port of Salalah  took the first step and is collaborating with Oman Customs and TradeLens built on IBM Hyperledger Fabric Platform for shipping and logistics industry. 

The new partnership provides existing customers of the discontinued TradeLens platform with a proven, reliable and powerful alternative for creating, transferring, and processing electronic bills of lading and trade documents. CEBS and CargoX will provide former TradeLens users with a frictionless transition of their workflows on the TradeLens platform by integrating the platform features through CEBS’s framework interfaces.

CEBS will start migrating current TradeLens customers to their Supply Chain Finance platform and the CargoX Blockchain Document Transfer (BDT) Platform for electronic trade document exchange. This is accomplished by using CEBS’s middleware cloud and on-premise platform to help organizations effortlessly leverage different public blockchains in their enterprise applications, saving time and money.

This way, companies can become future-proof and fully blockchain platform agnostic. Companies can keep their everyday workflows and introduce CargoX’s optimized, tightly integrated blockchain document transfer features into their existing processes. 

Satish Swaroop, CEO of CEBS Worldwide said: "We are committed to digitalizing the supply chain network for all trading partners and ensuring all transactions and documents exchanged are secure, traceable, and immutable. We have good partnerships and teams working with the public and private sector to shape the future and usher in a new era of global trade that is both frictionless and compliant." 

Stefan Kukman, CEO of CargoX said: "We are incredibly proud to welcome CEBS as our new partner. They are a true innovator in the market, binding together diverse solutions and platforms to build customer value. The digitalization of trade documentation is in full swing worldwide, and companies need all the support and advice they can get to implement the optimum solutions into their everyday workflows. "We see demand rising daily, and more than 104,000 companies registered on our platform prove that the CargoX Platform is becoming a standard item in the toolboxes of modern supply chain participants." 

CargoX in 2022 announced that Egypt had extended its agreement with Blockchain CargoX to include air cargo in its efforts to accelerate digital transformation of Egypt’s trade flows with the world. At the time the NAFEZA CargoX blockchain document transfer gateway had seamlessly and safely transferred more than 1,100,000 actual trade and finance documents for more than 75,000 customers.

The public-private partnership Misr Technology Services (MTS),80% owned by the Egyptian government, authorized CargoX as its blockchain document transfer gateway service provider for the country’s official NAFEZA single-window trade platform in March 2021.