Extending its efforts to bring distributed-ledger technology to shipping industries, IBM Corp. announced Tuesday a trial blockchain network in Singapore for supply chain management.

The trial is with Singapore-based shipping company Pacific International Lines Pte Ltd. and port operator PSA International Pte Ltd. Pacific International Lines is ranked 12th among the top container ship operators in the world and owns a fleet of 161 vessels that focus on shipping between Asia-Africa and the Middle East, with some ports of call on the U.S. west coast. PSA International is among the world’s largest ports, with 190,000 containers moved daily.

Under the deal, IBM’s Singapore division will work with PIL and PSA to develop a trial blockchain network that will streamline supply-chain tracking and management between the companies to keep track of all the ships and containers. The network will do so by providing a metadata-rich, time-stamped record of manifests, loading and unloading events, docking events, departure and arrival events in a tamper-proof transaction log.

“Across the global movement of goods and cargo, many activities continue to operate in silos,” said Tan Chong Meng, group chief executive officer of PSA. “Blockchain has the potential to reduce inefficiencies and gaps within the supply chain, promote more cost-efficient transactions and facilitate the continued growth in world trade.”

Blockchains work by distributing a cryptographically secured ledger across an entire network so that every participant has a copy that can be verified with every other. Each time a transaction happens — for example, a ship comes into port — that event is validated by all the participants in the network and then instantly committed to all the ledgers in the network.

With the use of cryptography, these transaction logs can be made private so that only members with permission can view the details of any given event. The result is an easily verifiable log that can be audited for authenticity without revealing potentially confidential information.

“A more transparent, secure and robust certification system and document flow will benefit the whole supply chain, as well as have enormous potential for application in sectors such as food, pharmaceutical and trade finance,” Tan added.

With so many moving parts – and piles of paperwork – supply-chain and logistics management is well-suited to the application of blockchains to make them more secure and transparent to operators.

This IBM deal reflects an earlier project the company started with container ship operator A.P. Moller-Maersk Group in March. Under that deal, IBM began work digitizing Maersk’s shipping manifests and operations in a pilot that covered shipments of Schneider Electric goods from the Port of Rotterdam to the Port of Newark.

Samsung SDS began a pilot blockchain program with a consortium of shipping logistics companies out of Korea in May. The group of companies, along with the Korea Customs Service, Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Hyundai Merchant Marine and IBM Korea, have been working to implement blockchain ledgers for the real-time tracking of cargo containers using Internet of Things technology.

“Blockchain as the foundation of an immutable, security-rich, highly auditable and transparent shared business network, offers improved transparency, data security and workflow productivity in complex business networks,” said Randy Walker, chairman and chief executive officer of IBM Asia Pacific.

IBM will be offering its Hyperledger Fabric platform blockchain solution to the new project with the expertise of its Supply Chain Business Network.

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