Insufficient industry support for their digital venture has caused international shipping giant A P Moller - Maersk (Maersk) and IBM to abandon their joint Tradelens blockchain-based supply chain platform initiative for international shipping.

Until recently the initiative has been working with banks and other partners on solutions combining digital letters of credit (L/Cs) with other trade finance instrument issuance, including the Tradelens electronic bill of lading (eBL) that aimed to simplify the issuance, transfer and surrender of original shipping documents by digitising the transfer of title process.

Open and neutral platform

TradeLens was founded with the aim of harnessing digitisation throughout the global supply chain to create an open and neutral industry platform.

"This vision centred on the ability to enable true information sharing and collaboration across a highly fragmented industry globally," according to a Tradelens statement issued last week in which the joint venturers explain how their earlier ambitions have been disappointed.

Lack of cooperation"Unfortunately, such a level of cooperation and support has not been possible to achieve at this point in time and Maersk and IBM have announced the discontinuation of the Tradelens platform," it says.

In May, Tradelens said it would combine its direct access to major ocean carriers and offerings such eBLs with digital trade finance network Contour's digital L/C solution and extensive trade finance network (DC World News, 23 May 2022).

Digital failures

Contour meanwhile in September announced it was acquiring the rulebook and other associated legal documents from another failed digital trade venture developed by the we.trade Innovation DAC joint-venture company owned by 12 European banks (DC World News, 14 September 2022).

Blockchain fintech we.trade, which marketed a bank payment undertaking product as an L/C alternative, shut down in May after failing to secure enough capital to continue operations (DC World News, 15 June 2022).

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.