Maersk, IBM pull the plug on TradeLens

Danish container shipping major Maersk and IBM have decided to withdraw the TradeLens offerings and discontinue the platform.

The blockchain-enabled shipping solution was created in 2018  with the aim of promoting more efficient and secure global trade, bringing together various parties to support information sharing and transparency.

The platform was jointly developed by IBM and GTD Solution, a division of Maersk.

“TradeLens was founded on the bold vision to make a leap in global supply chain digitization as an open and neutral industry platform. Unfortunately, while we successfully developed a viable platform, the need for full global industry collaboration has not been achieved. As a result, TradeLens has not reached the level of commercial viability necessary to continue work and meet the financial expectations as an independent business,” Rotem Hershko, Head of Business Platforms at A.P. Moller – Maersk said.

As of November 29, the TradeLens team launched action to withdraw the offerings and discontinue the platform. The goal is for the platform to go offline by end of quarter one, 2023.

Maersk said that during this process all parties involved would work to ensure that “customers are attended to without disruptions to their businesses.”

The shipping and logistics heavyweight added it would continue its efforts to digitise the supply chain and increase industry innovation through other solutions to reduce trade friction and promote more global trade.

“We are deeply grateful for the relentless efforts of our committed industry members and many tech talents, who together have worked diligently to advance the digitalisation of the industry through the TradeLens platform. We will leverage the work of TradeLens as a steppingstone to further push our digitisation agenda and look forward to harnessing the energy and ability of our technology talent in new ways,” said Hershko.