ACCUDIRE carried out the first shipments tracked on Blockchain within the Technical Textile Pilot
The stakeholders involved in the shipments were Filidea, as the yarn manufacturer and exporter company; Marina Textil, as the receiver of the semi-finished batch; D.B. Group, as the forwarding company in charge of the international transport; and ACCUDIRE, as the platform enabling the dialogue between the stakeholders and the digital management of the documentation.
Specifically, ACCUDIRE managed for the first time in Italy and Europe, a Groupage Shipment with the help of more geolocated e-CMRs. This approach is granted:
- Full regulatory and fiscal compliance for all parties involved
- Transparency and traceability on the shipment in all its components
- Information useful for the calculation of the environmental footprint of the shipped product
ACCUDIRE is a collaborative digital platform that exploits Blockchain and Edge Computing technologies to digitise logistics documents, making the supply chain more fluid and less opaque, and simplifying the work of the players involved. ACCUDIRE’s aim in the project is to connect the world of logistics and international shipping, contributing to the creation of transparent and secure ecosystems through a fully digital end-to-end approach for retrieving data and various information.
More specifically, it will be useful firstly for product traceability, and specifically will be tested, jointly with the Italian Customs and Monopolies Agency and ENEA, for accelerating the procedures for requesting the PCO (Preferential Certificate of Origin, a certification aimed at supporting the traceability of materials, parts, components, and products along the supply chain, attesting their origin). Jointly with ENEA, it will also be tested for collecting data to be used for the evaluation of the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) of the shipped product. The PEF is a methodology proposed by the European Commission to provide a common way of measuring the environmental performance of products.
The CMR (International consignment note) is a document required to manage road transports within the European Union. In Italy, this document not only has a logistical value but also a fiscal one, as it allows exporting companies to prove with certainty to the authorities that the goods have been delivered outside the country of departure, thus guaranteeing companies exemption from paying VAT on those goods. The e-CMR is the electronic version of the international consignment note, and it can be managed through the ACCUDIRE platform in complete security and transparency, with the support of geolocation and notarisation on blockchain of the advanced electronic signatures affixed by the parties involved.
Yarn processing (Image credits Filidea)
The process and operations of the shipments are described below:
- Preparation of the batch of goods to be shipped by the sender (Filidea, yarn producer); quantity of goods not sufficient to fill an entire truck and therefore request to freight forwarder (D.B. Group) for the organisation of a Groupage Shipment (groupage is a particular type of transport consisting in bundling goods from different companies in a single shipment managed by an appointed freight forwarder. This is a type of transport widely used in international trade, whereby goods from different shippers are grouped together in a single means of transport as they share the same destination country).
- Preparation of the documentation accompanying the goods during the entire journey
- Retrieval of the goods from Filidea's warehouse by the carrier contracted by D.B. Group; organisation of the cargo for international transport from the Italian logistics hub to the Spanish logistics hub; relocation of Filidea's lot on the final carrier for the delivery at the consignee's warehouse (Marina Textil)
The document management of the shipment was organised as follows, always using methods compliant with European regulations for the correct affixing of the electronic signature, the identification of the signatory, the date of signature, and the contextual notarisation on Blockchain:
- On November 18, Filidea generated the first e-CMR through the ACCUDIRE portal. This first e-CMR was electronically signed by the manager of Filidea as ‘Shipper’ and by the driver who picked it up at the warehouse as ‘Transporter’,
- On November 22, the Freight Forwarder generated the second e-CMR through the ACCUDIRE portal. This second e-CMR was then signed by the manager of D.B. Group as ‘Shipper’ of the transport, by the driver of the vehicle departing for the Spanish logistics hub as ‘Transporter’ and, on November 23, by the Spanish sorting hub as ‘Receiver’,
- Finally, on November 25, Marina Textil received the goods and signed the Filidea's e-CMR as final ‘Consignee’.
Simultaneously, all the necessary data to contribute to the calculation of the PEF have been collected; specifically, those related to the means of transport, fuels used, kilometres travelled, and loading percentages on the trucks. The data and information gathered in the execution of this part of the technical pilot will flow to the TRICK project blockchains (the public blockchain Quadrans and a Hyperledger instance managed by Ubitech for the project) and then made available to the TRICK platform.
A small but crucial step forward in the realisation of the EU TRICK Project!
CONTACT PERSON & EMAIL ADDRESS:
- Federica Dell’Osbel (email)
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