At the “Trade DX Symposium” held in conjunction with the APEC Summit, TradeWaltz of Japan announced the successful demonstration of a five-country system connection between Thailand, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand trade platforms, as well as a demonstration of the Thailand linkage with users.

TradeWaltz Inc(President and CEO: Hirohisa Kojima), which operates the Trade Information Linkage Platform (hereinafter referred to as “Trade PF”) “TradeWaltz”, announced system connection project between Japan-Thailand-Singapore-Australia-New Zealand trade PFs at the APEC New Zealand meeting last year and adopted in April 2022 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as “Indo-Pacific Supply Chain Enhancement Project.
TradeWaltz has successfully demonstrated a system connection between Japan-Thailand-Singapore-Australia-New Zealand trade PFs and users in Thailand this year, using the same data as actual transactions and cross-border structured data linkage. This is the first time in the world that five countries have linked their respective cross-industry B2B platforms at once, based on blockchain technology and with a high level of reliability.
We are pleased to announce that we made a presentation on this matter at the “Trade DX Symposium” attached to the APEC 2022 Thailand Summit on November 16.
(Reference）https://www.thaipr.net/en/business_en/3268102（Thai’s press release）

■Toward the full digitalization of cross-border trade
　Trade operations accompanying the flow of all kinds of goods involve numerous analog procedures in the transaction process, and the manual preparation of documents and checking for consistency incur significant costs. In addition, multiple parties are involved in transactions, and the creation of a more accurate and secure information delivery system is a common issue that transcends the boundaries between industries and countries.　
　TradeWaltz operates TradeWaltz, a trade PF that utilizes blockchain technology to fully computerize these cross-industry and cross-national communications. TradeWaltz has proven to streamline 44% of the time and cost of trade procedures across industries and countries. Trade PF initiatives are being developed not only in Japan but also in other countries around the world, including APEC and ASEAN member countries, where many of Japan’s trading partners participate. The connection of trade PFs (called interoperability of trade PFs) is expected to further improve operational efficiency by more than 44%.
　TradeWaltz announced last year at the APEC 2021 New Zealand meeting a five-country collaboration concept that would connect trade PFs and exchange information with four countries (Thailand, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand) that have national trade PFs with cross-industry characteristics, and has been developing this concept for one year as part of the METI’s “Indo-Pacific Supply Chain Resilience Project.

■As of November 18, successful connections between trade PFs among 5 countries and a demonstration of cooperation with users in Thailand have been completed.
　API connections were successfully established with Thailand Trade PF’s NDTP at the level of detailed structured data such as “quantity” and “place of arrival” that can be used directly in trade procedures in the partner country, and with Singapore Trade PF’s NTP and Australia/New Zealand Trade PF’s TradeWindow at the level of simple data with some additional item data in PDF format.　
　Of these, six users (Toyota Tsusho – Toyota Tsusho Thailand, Mitsubishi Corporation – Unicord, a Thai seafood processing company, and Mitsubishi Shoji Plastics – PTTGC, a chemicals subsidiary of Thai National Petroleum Corporation) actually operated the screens during the API linkage with the Thai NDTP from September 20 to 22 to test the linkage of structured trade document data, including purchase orders, invoices, and packing lists, between the trading platforms.

(Reference）Video of Thai PoC：https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIjcKyDlmAA

■PoC results with Thailand NDTP
1. 60% or more improvement in operational efficiency in the area of information linkage between Japan and Thailand
In this verification experiment, we conducted two main processes, (1) sending and receiving of purchase orders and (2) sending and receiving of shipping documents (invoices, packing lists, etc.), by comparing the current operations in Japan and the Trade PF linkage (TradeWaltz-NDTP), and found that the time required for data entry, sending, and data confirmation on the receiving end was reduced, leading to a 60% increase in work efficiency and promotion of remote work.
PTTGC, one of the participating companies, participated in the PoC with great enthusiasm, suggesting the expansion of the scope of utilization in the future, and we received positive comments from Japanese companies such as, “Not only time saving, but also human errors can be reduced by using the same information in both countries,” and “We would like to expand this to more business transactions with Thai companies”.

2. successful linkage of eCO (electronic Certification of Origin) data to Thailand
In conjunction with the above verification, Toyota Tsusho and Toyota Tsusho (Thailand) converted eCO (electronic certification of origin), which is structured data issued by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and can be used in other countries, into PDF format and sent it as an attachment to the TradeWaltz-NDTP linkage process, and confirmed that it was successfully linked to the Thailand Trade PF “NDTP We confirmed that the linkage to the Thailand Trade PF “NDTP” was successfully completed.

If (1) a system connection between the Chamber’s system and TradeWaltz, which is under consideration and development, (2) the data structure of NDTP is extended to be able to receive eCO and added to the TradeWaltz-NDTP linked data, and (3) the linkage between NDTP and Thai Customs is realized, eCO will be linked from Japan to Thailand in a single flow, and the application and utilization of economic partnership agreements (EPA, etc.) of both countries will be promoted efficiently and without omissions.

3. visualization of logistics CO2 emissions (GHG Protocol SCOPE 3) for a decarbonized society
　In this verification experiment, Toyota Tsusho and Toyota Tsusho (Thailand) utilized their commercial distribution channels to conduct a collaborative verification experiment to visualize logistics CO2 emissions for the promotion of decarbonized management, using the international logistics expertise of the collaborative partner (MITSUI-SOKO HOLDINGS Co., Ltd.).
　Specifically, information on the ports of origin and destination (port of export and port of import) and the weight of cargo transported between Japan and Thailand recorded on TradeWaltz was imported into the logistics CO2 emissions calculation system of “MITSUI-SOKO SustainaLink,” and the emission factors of the “GLEC Framework” were used to calculate CO2 emissions for each relevant transportation unit using the ton-kilometer method (*). CO2 emissions were calculated for each transportation unit using the ton-kilometer method (*).
CO2 emissions (tCO2) = transported weight (tons) x transported distance (km) x emission factor (tCO2/ton-kilometer)

The calculation results were linked to “zeroboard,” a cloud service for calculating and visualizing GHG emissions provided by another partner (Zeroboard Inc.), and displayed on a dashboard.

The results of this series of demonstrations were presented at the Digital Trade Transformation Symposium (DX Symposium), an event held on November 16 as an adjunct to the APEC Summit, where the speakers, Ms. Parnkae from NDTP and Mr. Someya of TradeWaltz, stated that, based on the challenges they had encountered, they would proceed to consider commercialization for actual users in the field in the future.

■ Comments from Representatives
Kobsak Duangdee, Head of NDTP Project of JSCCIB
“We are very pleased to have successfully completed the POC between TradeWaltz and NDTP. This wouldn’t have happened without the strong collaboration between two teams and strong support by TradeWaltz who is more advanced on platform development and services. The collaboration didn’t just begin this year but it has been since 2019 when NTT Data arranged for us to run a trial using the platform then. With some additional enhancements and broadened scope to the level efficiency improvement is widely realized, we believe this digital connectivity will be a key factor for incremental trade volume.  With more countries joining the digital trade connectivity network, incremental volume is not only between our two countries but also our regional trade.”

Satoru Someya, Managing Director, Head of CEO’s Office and Head of Global & Alliance Business Division, TradeWaltz Inc
“I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have supported the system connection between the trade PFs of the five APEC member economies as well as the Thailand Collaborative Demonstration. The PTTGC is enthusiastically participating in the PoC, and it is expected that the Japanese side is also considering the expansion of trade PF utilization, which may lead to speedy commercialization. We plan to conduct collaborative demonstrations with users in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand in the future.

Akinori Saito, Executive Officer, CSKO, Toyota Tsusho Corporation
“We are very pleased to have contributed to the digital linkage of trade between Japan and Thailand through a demonstration experiment using our transactions. We will continue to cooperate in any way we can to create a convenient digital environment for everyone in the industry.”

Hirofumi Koga, President and Representative Director, MITSUI-SOKO HOLDINGS Co., Ltd.
“We are very pleased that the “MITSUI-SOKO SustainaLink” developed and operated by the Group demonstrated its usefulness in this verification test and contributed to the promotion of initiatives to visualize CO2 emissions. We will continue to contribute to the realization of a de-carbonized society by promoting the visualization of CO2 emissions and the streamlining and optimization of actual logistics through various co-creation efforts, leveraging our abundant expertise in logistics and the collective strength of the Group.”

Yasushi Ono, General Manager, Business Development Department, ZeroBoard Inc.
We are very pleased to be working together with Zeroboard on the visualization of CO2 emissions from logistics between Japan and Thailand in the ASEAN region, where decarbonization efforts are expected to accelerate in the future. We will continue to contribute to decarbonization efforts in international logistics with our GHG emissions calculation and visualization solution zeroboard and zeroboard logistics (under development), which is specialized for the logistics industry.