Digital maritime highway
Fenix is a new pan-European project that has been designed to realise a fast and secure international trade lane. One of the results of the undertaking is to make trade between the ports of La Spezia and Casablanca more efficient.
The Italian port of La Spezia, which is located on the country’s northwestern Ligurian coast, and its Moroccan counterpart Casablanca, on the northern coast of Africa, are moving closer together. A fast and secure international trade lane is set to be realised, linking the two partners thanks to a pan-European project entitled Fenix.
Four players in the project
The other main players involved in the project, apart from the Port Authority of the Eastern Ligurian Sea (which also governs La Spezia) and the Moroccan gateway, are the Tarros Group, an Italian shipping line, and the Italian specialist for IT solutions for the transport and logistics sector, Circle.
The first phase of the pilot project to improve trade processes between the EU and North Africa was completed recently, a Circle media release stated. It represents a milestone for the logistics corridor linking Casablanca and La Spezia and the future development of Mediterranean trade.
The project concerns data exchange between all of the players involved in the trade lane, and the interoperability of the ports of La Spezia and Casablanca’s information systems.
At the European and Italian level
At the European level the Fenix project is being coordinated by the company Ertico – ITS Europe (European Road Transport Telematics Implementation Coordination Organisation for Intelligent Transport Systems and Services in Europe). At the national level it is being coordinated by the Italian ministry of infrastructure and transport (through TTS Italia, a task-tracking system).
The Casablanca terminal and Tarros Maroc are involved not least through an mou signed by the La Spezia port authority and Morocco’s Agence Nationale des Ports (ANP). The project will simplify and integrate information flows by exploiting the internet of things (IoT), and harmonising and digitalising document flows between all players in the process, also by exploiting blockchain and artificial intelligence.
In the last few days the Tarros Group and Circle together have installed e-seals and other materials on containers loaded onto trucks (see picture). E-seals have inside them RFIDs with numbered sequences, which enables every container to be identified and thus inspections to be carried out without delay.
Early exchange of requisite documents
Moreover, the La Spezia port authority, the Tarros Group and Circle have teamed up to ensure that the early exchange of all the requisite documents at the port of arrival and before the departure of a ship is possible.
These measures include the further exploitation of the advanced digitalisation of customs clearance tools. A new system interconnecting IT platforms, in particular, has also been developed recently. It will connect the ports of La Spezia and Casablanca with the platforms used by other companies involved in this international trade lane.
