The corporate venture arm of PSA International, PSA unboXed will invest in and partner with Roambee, a real-time supply chain visibility provider.
This strategic investment and partnership is expected to allow Roambee and PSA to co-create a verifiable item-level, multimodal Full Container Load (FCL)/Less than Container Load (LCL) visibility solution and ocean milestone standard backed by first-hand sensor and port operations intelligence.
The approach is different from purely crowdsourced carrier, Electronic Logging Devices (ELD), and shipping line Automatic Identification System (AIS) visibility aggregation. This verifiable ocean visibility will fuse the physical and digital aspects of ocean cargo from end to end, including first mile, at port, on vessel, and last mile, according to an announcement.
“Similar to the International Air Transport Association (IATA)’s Cargo IQ for air cargo, Roambee, combined with PSA’s worldwide port operations intelligence and ocean freight expertise, will be able to co-create a visibility-driven milestone standard for ocean cargo in addition to delivering real-time, item-level location and condition for logistics automation,” explains Roambee.
Sanjay Sharma, CEO of Roambee, commented, “The ocean visibility space’s recent consolidations have still left the core aspect of ‘verifiable visibility’ unaddressed. Overall, carrier data integrations focus on orders and not whether the actual FCL or LCL affirmatively completed a milestone or experienced physical excursions. With PSA’s support, Roambee will fulfill this crucial need with its immersive location-aware platform, purpose-built sensor technology, and first-hand knowledge of container movement within port operations.”
Furthermore, Elton Fong, vice president of PSA unboXed, said, “PSA’s ambition is to visualise end to end cargo flows to improve our supply chain orchestration capabilities. Roambee’s real-time visibility combined with our CALISTA® digital platform will enable verifiable, data-driven orchestration of the physical, regulatory, and financial flows for cargo owners.”
With pre-trained Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)-powered models that Roambee acquired through its Arnekt AI acquisition, shippers can access accurate signals to verify a variety of variables about their shipment, according to the company, which mentioned that these include whether an FCL/LCL made it on a vessel, if the temperature/humidity is congenial, if it was loaded onto the right vessel, if the container is secure, or if it is definitively in a customs clearance queue.
With these accurate supply chain signals, Roambee claims it can enable 70% better ETA predictions, 90%+ cold chain compliance, and orchestrate timely intervention on exceptions in multimodal transport.
