Leading German shipping line, Hapag-Lloyd, has signed a new five-year partnership with Portchain Connect.
The agreement will see the Portchain platform deployed across all of the shipping line’s global operations.
Portchain Connect offers a digitalised process that aligns berths between ocean carrier vessels and terminals, which then allows earlier and more frequent scheduling decisions to be made.
This is in-line with the recent International Maritime Organization (IMO) view that both of these elements can be decreased by a combined 5.9 per cent in the 24-hour period before a vessel arrives.
Hapag-Lloyd is planning to utilise the Portchain Connect service to transition from the existing email and telephone communication approach into a digital information flow that will provide its terminal network portfolio with real-time and immediate access to shipping schedule updates and key information about the vessels in service.
Andrew Allen, Director – Terminal Partnering, Hapag-Lloyd notes: “We believe in the power of leveraging automated data flows to optimise our Port Calls and create transparency and efficiency for our Marine and Port Operations teams globally.
He underlines that Portchain will be able to “digitise and streamline” the operator’s “berth alignment processes” to the benefit of not only the shipping line, but also terminal partners.
Hapag-Lloyd currently operates a fleet of 252 ships and transported 11.9 million TEU in 2021. For the first nine months of 2022 volumes were recorded at just under 8.99 million TEU, which compared to 8.98 million TEU for the comparable period in 2021.
