Maersk, IBM end blockchain | Silicon UK Tech News

Maersk and IBM said on Tuesday that they have decided to withdraw the TradeLens offers and discontinue the platform.

Maersk announced that it will discontinue its blockchain TradeLens platform, which aimed to limit the shipping industry’s costly paper trail.

The two entities had announced a blockchain joint venture back in January 2018, to use blockchain in the movement and shipment of goods worldwide.

Shipping – © Shutterstock – EvrenKalinbacak

Blockchain platform

At the time, the two firms said this type of platform was necessary because keeping track of shipments was hampered by outdated, costly and inefficient processes.

An example of this was the manual movement of paper documentation to clear goods for export or import, customs clearance and payments.

The IBM and Maersk joint venture sought to provide more efficient and secure methods of conducting global trade using blockchain technology.

It aimed to “jointly develop global trade digitization platform built on open standards.”

It included the use of blockchain to help shipping companies and traders move and track their goods across international borders digitally, with greater transparency, security, efficiency and simplicity.

Blockchain would provide a reliable view of supply chain transactions and could even eliminate the need for pen and paper, replacing it with a digital process for documents.

Blockchain seemed to be the perfect solution.

In the early days, blockchain was mostly associated with banks and financial systems, as it is a digital technology for recording and verifying transactions.

It was also mostly associated as the global netbook underpinning bitcoin.

This led IBM to predict that most banks will adopt blockchain, but blockchain is also suitable for other industries, especially the shipping industry which operates large networks of various partners.

Not commercially viable

And it seems that both Maersk and IBM managed to create the TradeLens platform.

But on Monday, Maersk said the TradeLens team is taking steps to withdraw the offers and decommission the platform, and the intention is that the platform “will go offline by the end of quarter one, 2023.”

During this process, all parties involved will ensure that customers are taken care of without interruption to their business, the shipping giant added.

“TradeLens was founded on the bold vision of taking a leap in global supply chain digitization as an open and neutral industry platform,” noted Rotem Hershko, Head of Business Platforms at AP Møller – Maersk.

“Unfortunately, while we have developed a viable platform, the need for full global industry collaboration has not been achieved,” Hershko said. “As a result, TradeLens has not reached the level of commercial viability necessary to continue its operations and meet its financial expectations as an independent business.”

“We are deeply grateful for the relentless efforts of our dedicated industry members and many technical talents, who together have worked diligently to advance the digitization of the industry through the TradeLens platform,” said Hershko.

“We will leverage the work of TradeLens as a springboard to further push our digitization agenda and look forward to leveraging the energy and capability of our technology talent in new ways,” Hershko concluded.