How Blockchain Technology Can Be Useful To Maritime Industry?

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• April 12, 2019

With the advancement in Blockchain technology, we have seen the endeavors of many companies to implement the same in their mainstream business operations. Today we can see many industries trying to use Blockchain and developed solutions based on this technology. We have already heard about automotive industry initiative to implement Blockchain based solutions, apart from this energy division of Siemens will make use of Blockchain for interoperability and energy distribution. It is not just these industries; even the maritime industry is focussing on implementation Blockchain as a part of their functioning.  In this blog, I will be focussing on how Blockchain can be revolutionary for the maritime industry and which are the areas where this technology can be implemented?

Why Blockchain?

We have heard a lot about Blockchain, it is not only its association with Bitcoin which has made this technology so popular but at the same time, Blockchain offers myriads of features which makes it a technology of the future. The blockchain is the digital distributed ledger technology where every information exchange is marked by timing. It gets stored in chronological order and thus becomes easy to track and trace. A key feature of Blockchain is decentralization, which means that the data is not stored in a central server but is distributed across the network, it is also known as nodes. These nodes validate and verify the information which then gets entered into the ledger.

Blockchain technology and maritime industry:

Shipping and maritime industry are going to witness one of the biggest transformation and revolution with the implementation of Blockchain technology. The paperwork has always dominated by paperwork. With the help of this technology, we can expect the shipping and maritime industry to have a completely different mode of operations in the times to come.

Let us understand how this is going to happen?

Let us take an example of how excessive paperwork can turn out to be a misleading and time-consuming affair for the shipping and the maritime industry, The Trail of Roses was a project undertaken by Maersk which is one of the largest shipping company. Maersk found that the shipment took 34 days to reach the retailers form the farm. Of these, 10 days were wasted because of the important documents had gone missing. If these documents and information in the documents were easily traced, then the shipment could have reached its destination in 24 days only. Thus, we see that excessive dependency on paperwork can be troublesome.

How will Blockchain help?

Blockchain can prove helpful in various areas when it comes to shipment industry. The first is transparency and traceability. Both these features are beneficial for every industry inclusive of maritime and shipping industry as well. Currently, this industry relies on digital medium and paperwork where paperwork still overshadows the digital implementation. It can lead to the consumption of a lot of time when it comes to data tracking. With the help of Blockchain, we can easily overcome these problems and create a more efficient system.

Lesser Paperwork- as mentioned above, one of the key problems that can be overcome with the help of Blockchain is the reduction in paperwork. The conventional methodology involved sending a copy of the bills to be sent to different parties. This involved a lot of paperwork and was time-consuming. With the help of DLT, we can easily make use of digital ledger to access the information pertaining to goods loaded on the shipment and information related to it. This ledger is accessible to all the people in the network.

Lesser Cost- One of the primary reasons why companies are relying on Blockchain technology is that it helps in saving a cost that usually goes processing of information. With the intervention of Blockchain, the cost of maintaining, sorting and updating records of the shipment can be reduced. It also frees the company from the extra cost that goes in unforeseen expenditure on misplaced or lost documents.

Time-saving- Another reason for the success of Blockchain technology is that it reduces unnecessary time delay which goes in doing the paperwork and also reduces the possibility of information leakage.

Real-time data- The best part about Blockchain is that this system works in real-time. Blockchain allows the user to keep a record of all the transactions updated at any time. We all know that Blockchain works on the principle of decentralization which means that there is no delay in updating the ledger about the real-time location of a shipment.

Conclusion- The maritime industry is still untouched with the effect of digitization and Blockchain. There is a lot of scope of improvement in this field. The shipping and maritime is one of the biggest industry and with Blockchain implementation, we can expect this industry to grow and become more efficient with the implementation of Blockchain technology.