Semiconductor company Marvell Asia Private Limited can be assured that export permits will be declared and approved in time for their air export shipments before their forwarder collects the cargo and lodges in to the Ground Handling Agents at the Changi Airfreight Centre. The forwarder Transpeed Logistics Private Limited, in turn, has seen permit transaction lead times reduced from two to three days to just 10 minutes.

Marvell and Transpeed are among the 14 air cargo exporters and logistics companies reaping the benefits of adopting new paperless solutions under e-freight@Singapore , a sector-level initiative that aims to enhance efficiency and accuracy in airfreight documentation processes across the air cargo supply chain.

The solutions were developed by three consortia led by Innosys Pte Ltd, Kewill Pte Ltd and vCargo Cloud Pte Ltd, which were selected by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore in February last year through an industry Call-for-Collaboration.

Speaking at the launch of the e-freight@Singapore solutions on 25 June, Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister of State, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport, noted that on average, air cargo exporters and related companies submitted about 30 documents to complete one freight shipment. Most of the data was replicated across this catalogue of documents, from the invoice to the House Airway Bill. “These paper-based processes can therefore be made more efficient, productive and cost effective,” she said.

However, to achieve this, the entire airfreight industry would have to re-engineer and transform its processes, starting with the sharing of data at source and re-using this data as it passes through stakeholders in the supply chain. This would avoid costly duplication of data entry efforts and minimise data inaccuracy.

The larger intangible benefit of e-freight@Singapore, therefore, was that it demonstrated a model for bringing together all stakeholders along a value chain to help transform an industry to achieve a quantum leap in productivity. “To reap the full benefits of e-freight, companies must be prepared to work closely with their business partners to jointly eliminate inefficiencies and to achieve productivity transformations across company boundaries. This is a model that can be emulated across industries for sectoral-level productivity transformation.”

It is estimated that e-freight@Singapore can potentially achieve annual time and cost savings of 1.7 million man-hours or an equivalent of S$18.4 million respectively at the national level, thus increasing Singapore capacity to handle more trade. These benefits are enjoyed by all stakeholders across the supply chain, from shippers, freight forwarders to airlines.

Singapore is one of the first few countries in the world to implement e-freight data at source initiative. e-freight@Singapore is also a trend-setter for adoption at an international level, said Mrs Teo. The effort is in line with the vision of the International Air Transport Association as well as the Global Air Cargo Advisory Group, which is striving for e-freight to reach 80 per cent of all global route networks by 2015. “Going forward, the e-freight@Singapore solutions, together with the common and inter-operable data standards, will enable Singapore to collaborate with overseas e-freight ready partners to fulfil the vision of cross-border end-to-end e-freight,” she said.