Global shipping, standards and documentation body BIMCO has recently published its electronic Bill of Lading Standard for the bulk shipping sector.
“Our goal is to help accelerate the digitalisation process by establishing common industry standards for electronic bills of lading,” BIMCO said in a formal statement. It added that the eBL Standard is a “structured data set” of 20 pre-defined data fields common to bulk shipping bills of lading.
A “bill of lading” is an all-in-one document of title (a document that proves owners / control / possession), a receipt for goods shipped, and a contract of carriage.
So a bill of lading is extraordinarily important. Although e-bills have been available for more than 20 years, less than 2% of seaborne world trade is carried out with an e-bill.
“One of the obstacles to wider acceptance of eBLs that has been identified is that it is currently not possible to transfer an eBL from one approved platform to another,” BIMCO writes.
Making e-bills transferrable requires the e-bill to be in the same “digital language”. And creating such a digital language requires the creation and application of a technical standard.
BIMCO’s e-bill is aligned with the UN/CEFACT Multimodal Transport Reference Data Model as well as the standards produced by DCSA and FIATA. It is also consistent with the bills of lading used in the bulk sector.
“This means that the underlying framework applies equally to BIMCO’s various bills of lading and other bulk bills of lading, for example house bills. The standard is freely available to any electronic bill of lading solution provider,” BIMCO writes.
