Last week shipping firm Maersk announced the shuttering of its five-year-old blockchain project TradeLens, a joint initiative with IBM. The Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), backed by COSCO Shipping Lines, Hapag Lloyd and six others, would be considered TradeLens’s most direct competitor. GSBN CEO Bertrand Chen shared his views on what went wrong, how GSBN has a different strategy, when blockchain is relevant, and the evolution of digitization in the shipping industry.
Rather than being dismissive, Chen gave credit to the TradeLens team. “We’re super impressed (with) how they built this network,” said Chen. “I think it was a big achievement. I did not think they would be successful at first, but they managed to do it.”
He thought the new TradeLens CEO’s strategy of building partnerships was the right way to go and was as shocked as everybody else when Maersk announced it was throwing in the towel.
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