Thousands of airfreight shipments per year will go paperless as a result of a major mail order group's decision to send shipments using Bolero, the electronic trading platform over which secure transactions can take place over the internet.

This forecast accompanied the announcement of the first live air freight shipment through the Bolero system made in conjunction with Grattan plc, part of Otto Versand, the world's largest mail order group and second largest on-line retailer after amazon.com.

7,000 per year

The shipments of knitwear were carried on Cathay Pacific using a Hong Kong based air cargo forwarder, Jetspeed. Other parties involved in the transaction included Shing Fun, the textiles company in Hong Kong that manufactured the goods and Grattan's bank, HSBC.

Otto, Grattans parent company commenced sea freight shipments out of Hong Kong into the UK and Germany in November 2001 and they estimate that over 90 per cent of all Hong Kong consignments - about 7,000 per year - will soon be on the Bolero system.

In the UK alone, Otto Versand sells 35,000 different products ranging from men's ties to television sets, severally sourced from 1200 different suppliers.

Benefits

Grattan perceives one of the major benefits to adopting the Bolero system is the ability to close the visibility gap between goods arriving for shipment and the documentation being received by Grattan staff.

For sea-freight shipments this time lag can be as high as several weeks. This says Grattan can lead to difficulties in predicting stock availability and opens up the potential for lost sales opportunities.

Airfreight shipments can also be subject to much shorter delays if documents and goods fail to arrive simultaneously. But goods sent by air are often time critical and a delay of just 24 hours can result in lost sales opportunities.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or any of the other partners in DC-PRO.