The Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) said that they integrated as a non-profit organization in Hong Kong. Global Shipping Business Network aims to digitize trade boasts and four-port terminal operators. 

The funding shareholders are COSCO SHIPPING PORTS, COSCO SHIPPING LINES, SPG Qingdao Port, Shanghai International Port Group, and PSA International. 

It has been more than a year since GSBN was planning to execute. A big company was getting regulatory approvals that have been received across multiple jurisdictions. 

The idea was first announced in late 2018. With so many delays, it has lost one of its planned shareholders, CMA CGM, which is involved in IBM. However, it’s not been one-way work. The shareholder Hapag-Lloyd has also TradeLens but is no longer a participant. 

The goal of the TradeLens and GSBN solutions is to digitize logistics data. 

The Managing Director of Hapag Lloyd says that the GSBN foundation symbolizes an important achievement towards establishing a wide-industry, secure, digital collaboration platform. They aim to benefit all the parties which are there in the global supply chain. 

The need of the hour is to digitize shipping documentation that has been a daunting process. Typically, releasing cargo involves presenting a lading bill that has been couriered from the ship’s departure point. GSBN added that their first solution is for a touch-free cargo release and this would involve an electronic bill of lading, 

COO of OOCL said that the Cargo Release pilot has allowed hundreds of customers to terminate their manual steps and remove the need for paper documents. Besides, this reduced the overall time from 2-3 days to 1-2 hours. 

This week, COSCO SHIPPING told that it was using a blockchain cargo release solution at China’s Wuhu Port. This was all done in collaboration with Shanghai International Port Group. 

Although, both the organizations are GSBN backers and GSBN confirmed the solution did not use GSBN. 

Trade finance is also on the GSBN plan.  In the coming months, the plan is to open up membership with multiple tiers, in part depending on data volume committed to the platform.