Scandinavia goes e-freight

AS a founding member of IATA’s e-freight programme, SAS Cargo has operated e-freight trade lane between Gothenburg and Hong Kong for more than a year. The trade lane Hong Kong-Gothenburg and Stockholm went operational during September 2008 but is now set to cover airfreight to and from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
“The first test shipments have already been sent and Norway is now open for paper-free shipments on domestic, import, export and transfer,” said product manager Steen Otterstrøm, SAS Cargo. “Sweden has been paper-free since 2007 and Swedish domestic trade lanes are now in focus for development. In Denmark the authorities have a technical issue in relation to exports, but we will be handling import and transfers as e-freight in Denmark within a very short time.”
The paper-free shipments are organised in close cooperation with national customs authorities and IATA forwarders like DHL, Schenker, Geodis Wilson, Kuehne + Nagel and Trust Forwarding.
“In Norway alone Trust is processing 3,000 airwaybills a month and estimates claim that in average each airwaybill is handled 60 times during its life span,” said Robert Skoog, general manager Trust Forwarding. “Obviously, electronic airwaybills represent a tremendous improvement of our work processes. The paperwork will become much more simple and efficient, when all information needed will be available online.”
According to Skoog the customers will also experience advantages from e-freight. He expects the quality to improve when typing errors have been eliminated and airwaybills cannot be mislaid. Furthermore he sees an opportunity for improved feedback as well as quality and performance measures in the interface between IATA’s e-freight project and Cargo 2000. With e-freight the transport flow becomes more transparent to all parties involved.