INTTRA sees upswing in business

INTTRA sees upswing in business    INTTRA, an e-commerce portal for the liner shipping industry, saw an 18.8 percent increase in traffic on its system in the first seven months of the year compared to the same period last year.
   The company noted its growth in bookings and shipping instructions is more than double the 8.1 percent global container market growth reported by Drewry Container Forecaster in June 2011.
   Some of the fastest growth is occurring in Asia and Latin America, INTTRA said. Its business has increased 60 percent in South Korea, 33 percent in Malaysia, 32 percent in Indonesia, 94 percent in Panama, 84 percent in Guatemala and 50 percent in Peru.
   Ken Bloom, chief executive officer of INTTRA, also said that his company supports the call in a “shipping manifesto” rolled out by Maersk in June for more streamlined and reliable business processes.

Bloom

   “INTTRA plans on playing its part to help make this idea a reality and will be introducing initiatives to assist in optimizing the shipment planning and booking process for shippers and carriers. These initiatives will include much needed tools to identify opportunities for improving the booking process and for measuring the performance of the ocean supply chain,” he said.
   “The solution to industry issues such as over-booking and reliable lead times for planning and forecasting ocean supply chains requires industry collaboration and the collection of data to measure and understand supply chain performance. If the industry can measure performance, we can then score progress towards improvement,” Bloom said.