Krishnapatnam Port, one of the country’s largest all-weather; deep water port on the east-coast of India today announced that it is all set to go paperless by implementing e-Xpressway for its container operations.

A first-of-its-kind cloud based electronic platform; e-Xpressway has been developed by Gateway Media, a knowledge management company which is into publication, conferences and market research for the last one decade in the shipping industry to speedup container terminal operations by digitizing the end-to-end documentation processes related to containers. It provides a first-of-its-kind service by digitizing the end-to-end documentation processes involving all the stakeholders of the maritime trade – Vessel operators, container operators, Terminal, CHA, Freight Forwarder, CFS, Transporter, Empty yards, etc., for export and import containers moving by both road or by rail.

According to a research, while the shipping industry has an excellent infrastructure for smooth movement of shipping containers, it lacks facilities for the seamless movement of container documentation from source to delivery. Several man-hours are spent in physically transmitting an estimated 200 documents for shipment of a single container from source to destination making the industry extremely inefficient and unreliable.

e-Xpressway provides a cloud-based online access to Vessel Operator, Container Operator, Terminal, CHA, Freight Forwarder and all the other stakeholders for generating and processing forms and for gating the container in and out of terminal. Besides it also offers online approval of containers for customs and online form generation for export and import by road and by rail containers.

Mr. Jithendra Nimmagadda - COO, Krishnapatnam Port Container Terminal (KPCT) said, “e-Xpressway is a path breaking digital platform and is capable of changing the face of Indian maritime industry considering the intense complexities, delays and inefficiencies involved in container documentation. With a whopping 33% of entire container processing time spent in co-ordination of paperwork, the system can completely eradicate the heavy dependence on traditional methods of transmission of documents. With increasing implementation of this system by the maritime industry, we can jointly transform the industry to make it more competitive, transparent and efficient.”

The Cloud based solution acts as a centralized docking station to all the stakeholders such as Vessel operators, Container operators, CHA, Freight Forwarders, CFS, Terminal operator, Empty yards, etc., to access and process the container documents thereby eliminating inefficiencies in the process. Each stakeholder can simply log in to e-Xpressway to complete their respective activities which will automatically push the activity to the next concerned stakeholder. The platform provides transparency by providing the real-time status of the container documentation stages and their completion. It also enables QR code generation for easy scanning and processing the transactions at the terminal gate and thereby cutting the long queues.

Mr. Ramprasad – [Executive Director], Maritime Gateway at the launch said, ''we are proud to unveil e-Xpressway which is an ideal solution to the complex documentation procedure in the industry. With real time updates and notifications on the status of the container and its documentation, every stakeholder in the EXIM trade can clearly track containers. Besides the container search facility gives the complete picture of the various stages the container has been through. All of these will significantly reduce the time and money spent on container documentation and hence can radically better the industry’s throughput time.”

Gateway Media, a knowledge-based organization, which has been extending services to the South Asian Shipping Industry for the last one decade, developed this platform for the benefit of the stakeholders with this domain knowledge gained over a period of time.

Gateway Media publishes Maritime Gateway premier shipping magazine and conducts market research and organizes highly focused conferences.