Introduction

It has been some time since we sent out a Newsletter, but rest assured that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been working hard! We have seen a quickening adoption of electronic shipping documents, in particular in the dry bulk, barge and trade finance sectors. Below are some headline figures which demonstrate rapid progress in some areas and initial progress in others.

CargoDocs Figures

Global Tankers News

We anticipate a significant growth in tanker eB/Ls over the next 6 months as as a number of key terminals go live and other important locations trial the solution. The status of various terminals and refineries are as follows:

• Preparing to go live are:

  Phillips 66 Humber	mid Nov
  Total Lindsey Oil Refinery	mid Nov
  Preem’s two refineries	mid Nov
  Petrobras Ilha D'água terminal	Nov-Dec

•  Other locations considering adopting CargoDocs
  • 15 other terminals and refineries, whose names cannot currently be published, but which are on track to sign up to CargoDocs by Q1 2014

• Tankers signed up represent 20% of world’s tanker fleet; this figure climbs over 30% if these owners were to sign up their entire tanker fleet.  We expect these numbers to increase significantly after P66 Humber, Total Immingham and Preem go live.

European Barge News

eNomination use continues to increase in particular as Zeeland Refinery became the first to start issuing eSailing Advices through an interface. Work on eBarge Receipts is also underway, and we are trying to cement go live target dates at a number of locations sometime between Dec 13 – Apr 14.

• Traders / Majors

  • Nominations volume growth has exceeded 270% over the last few quarters
  • Litasco Clean and Heavy desks using CargoDocs exclusively for nominating their loading refinery
  • Cargill now onboard and expanding to Middle Distillates
  • Morgan Stanley added Jet desk earlier this year
  • P66 now onboard with Middle Distillates and Gasoline
  • Trafigura recently expanded from Gasoline to include Middle Distillates as well
  • Mercuria is the latest trading company to come onboard
  • Reliance has management signoff to move forward, and is finalizing their legal review
  • Shell is running trial with essDOCS which covers carrier eNoms and ADN compliance
  • BP planning to test the barge solution with the gasoline desk
• Load Terminals
  • Held a European Barge workshop in July with 46 participants from 38 companies.  For more details of this workshop click here
  • Zeeland Refinery  is now live with eSailing Advice; data is pushed to CargoDocs via the standard API / interface; you can read the full press release here
  • Approximately 5 terminals are targeting a rollout of electronic Barge Receipts between Q1 / Q2 next year. More information can be found on our regular Barge Newsletter. Please email adopt@essdocs.com, if you would like to receive a copy of this newsletter
• Barge owners signed up so far accounts for >5%, we are targeting increasing this to 99% prior to the first operational use of eBarge Documents
• Enhancements
  • A great deal of user feedback has been included in our new releases over the past 10 months. More details will be sent in the Product Update we will send out shortly

Bulkers News

Adoption of CargoDocs in the bulker market has grown strongly in 2013 since Cargill announced its first eB/L shipment in February.

• Agri cargos

  • Cargill is expanding the use of eDocs intra-Americas and ex-Brazil and Argentina in particular; full press release here
  • ED&F Man is preparing to test eDocs in sugar trades ex-Australia
  • Bunge will commence testing eDocs on shipments ex-S. America starting at the end of October
• Metals / minerals / ores cargos
  • BHP Billiton and Cargill are live on trade financed shipments of iron ore from Australia to China

Liner News

We are preparing for our first Go Live in the container space within the next few months.  We have also commenced various projects with FIATA Members to test an electronic FIATA bill of lading.

• Liner / Ocean eB/Ls

  • Working with 4 of the top 10 liner carriers, two of which have already successfully completed testing
  • Building a cluster of coffee traders with Noble, Louis Dreyfus and most recently Rothfos (Neumann Kaffee Gruppe) testing CargoDocs on trades ex-Vietnam and/or ex-South America
  • Working with ExxonMobil and their forwarder Elite on shipments of polymers from Singapore to China. This trial involves letters of credit whereby ePresentations will be made to multiple banks using CargoDocs.
• FIATA / NVOCCs / Forwarders / House eB/Ls
  • We have commenced projects with Forwarders in 7 countries to test the electronic FIATA bill of lading (eFBL)
  • Elite is involved as the forwarder for our Chemicals liner project above, however, the trade uses Ocean and not House eB/Ls

Trade Finance News

In bulker and liner trades the requirement to handle ePresentation has become more critical.  Our original pilot covering the eUCP and ePresentation in 2008 ensured that the key functionality was already available when the banks required it.

• essDOCS is currently engaged with 20+ banks who are looking to adopt our CargoDocs eUCP Presentation solution
• First banks to have gone live using eUCP Presentation are ABN Amro, Royal Bank of Scotland and Westpac; a full press release will be issued next week
• This will be followed closely by Bank of America and one of China’s top three trade finance banks
• We are also working with SWIFT on two separate projects
  • eUCP Presentation via SWIFT
  • Using CargoDocs electronic document data to feed the BPO matching engine (TSU) and controlled release of electronic bills of lading on a successful BPO match

Please contact Ashley Skaanild, essDOCS, or Andre Casterman, SWIFT, should you wish to learn more about this work with SWIFT

Customs / Country News

• New countries where eDocs will be tested and/or used include: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, Egypt, South Africa, offshore West Africa

• Brazil Customs & Tax Authorities have approved the use of CargoDocs for export cargos, and will look at import cargos during the second phase of Petrobras’ Trial

• Singapore approved CargoDocs for Exports and Imports
• A list of all countries where eDocs have been accepted is available on our website. Note just because a country is not listed does not mean that CargoDocs cannot be used for trades to/from that country.

Product Roadmap

Functionality enhancements planned for the upcoming few months include:

• Tankers/Bulkers

  • Collaborative drafting for Masters
  • Enhanced Convert functionality allowing users to convert and switch simultaneously

• Barges
  • Rebuild of all eNom functionality, i.e., counter party, load port, splits, amends, CIF and FOB flows, based on a message approach rather than the current workflow approach, based on our customer feedback this will make the solution more flexible and functional
  • ADN Compliant Electronic Barge Bills of Lading / Receipts, and supporting documents
  • Carrier and/or transport desk eNoms (Barge contracts)
• Liner
  • Data entry for Forwarders/NVOCC
• Trade Finance
  • BPO functionality
• Government / Chambers of Commerce
  • Original eCertificates of Origin via eCertify

Request a Demo

The descriptions of our processes and modules in this newsletter may not necessarily jump off the page for people and firms who have yet to explore what is on offer by essDOCS.  It is certainly a lot simpler for most people to see a demonstration for the trade or trades in which they operate.  Here they can see how the documents used are industry standard wordings, how the various stages of the negotiation of an electronic bill of lading correspond with paper equivalents and how electronic documentary processes are becoming mundane to the people and firms who are now using or testing them.  Request a demonstration and see for yourself!