Harnessing The Power Of E-Freight

Technology is making the world an easier place to live in. The need is to understand and embrace it whole heartedly. For the air cargo sector, e-freight carries the same potential. It allows for online track and trace functionality and can reduce the industry cycle time by an average of 48 hours.

- Shreya Bhattacharya

In 2016, airlines transported 52 million metric tonnes of goods, representing more than 35 percent of global trade by value but less than 1 percent of world trade by volume. That is equivalent to $6.8 trillion worth of goods annually, or $18.6 billion worth of goods every day. The figures very well explain why air cargo is vital to the health of world economy.

However, the sector is capable of contributing much more with a little help of technology and innovation. A more efficient air cargo ecosystem could improve profitability for carriers and also enhance transparency and predictability across the supply chain. Much of the key requisites like faster transit times, greater reliability, and improved visibility can singularly be solved by e-freight.

Accelerating the digitization of business processes 

While the air cargo industry was struggling with paper-based complicated processes that caused bottlenecks in the supply chain, digital innovations offered a much simplified solution, wherein all the required information is exchanged electronically between the parties, both industry to industry and industry to government. This alternative, widely known as e-freight initiative gave the sector an opportunity to do away with at least 30 documents that were generated and needed by the various parties involved, in order to process cargo by air.