Two of the world's largest shipping companies, NYK Line and MOL, have signed up to online trade finance platform bolero.net.
The two join a growing number of banks, container companies, trading houses and B2B exchanges and mining companies that have joined the system that allows anyone engaged in cross-border trade to exchange business data and documents securely over the internet, in a legally certain environment.
Both NYK Line and MOL have separately implemented a number of e-commerce solutions for their own activities within the shipping industry, and these are further complemented by their use of the bolero.net system. NYK Line, for example, has created the container portal, Pegasus, which allows NYK customers to interactively manage all the logistics of their cargo shipments online while MOL employs a state-of-the-art IT network providing customers with instant access to information such as vessel and cargo tracking, scheduling, booking, and container control.
"Being part of bolero.net is essential in today's highly competitive environment," says Masaru Satose, general manager of corporate planning at MOL. "We will now be able to offer our customers and suppliers access to more efficient and highly secure systems that reduce costs for everyone involved in the trade chain."
Bolero.net was created in September 1999 by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) and the Through Transport (TT) Club, an insurance mutual owned by 5,000 transport operators. The bolero system aims to provide a secure electronic transmission of business data and documents along the entire trade chain from front-end order processing management to backend trade document exchange. bolero.net is working with a wide range of technology vendors, including Sun Microsystems, AMS and Mercator.
