ECTA Digitalization update June 2026
Digital collaboration between shippers and carriers requires a digital transformation journey and is not that easy as it sounds. To analyse the barriers and value drivers, the newly ECTA digitalization workgroup (WG) did finalize the ECTA “digital collaboration” survey results in collaboration with Cefic, ECTA & ECLIC and the final digitalization survey report can be found here.
Industry data standards form the cornerstone of digital collaboration and information exchange. The ECTA digitalization WG started to review the former created ECTA equipment digitalization master data best practice guideline based upon internal questions from ECTA Members. In addition, ECTA got informed that ITCO had started to create a global (bulk) tankcontainer master data guidelines with a more technical focus. Meanwhile the ECTA WG and ITCO are investigating if and how we can merge the two equipment standardization initiatives with the aim to create a common tankcontainer industry equipment data standard where data can be exchanged via one global data platform.
At the start of this year, ECTA and ECLIC joined forces and submitted an EU project dossier together with a broader eFTI project consortium to seek for EU funds in 2026 to investigate the eFTI regulatory requirements in practice. eFTI stands for electronic Freight Transport information and aims to digitize and harmonize the exchange of regulatory freight transport information across the EU (replacing papers like eCMR with electronic data). Unfortunately and even though the EU dossier was well underbuilt, the EU funds have not been granted to our consortium and an alternative path will need to be worked out. ECTA & ECLIC will continue to strive for industry standardized, data governed, open source solutions and aims to avoid the increasing IT complexity and connectivity costs driven by new EU regulations and many new different sprouting IT platforms.
The BASF Boost LU digitalization project, which was presented at the ECTA annual meeting last year, is aiming to reduce truck waiting times through automated pre-checks. Besides, the project aims to implement the digital EFTCO cleaning document industry process (or ECLIC eECD-ePPL) which is now moving forward in Germany towards implementation as of Q3, 2026. The ECLIC eECD community have been growing over the last quarter with 25% and the latest list of ECLIC carrier and cleaner members can be found here.
To further facilitate data exchange between all intermodal stakeholders and improve intermodal delivery predictability, UIRR-ERFA and ECTA published 3 new digital intermodal best practice guidelines. Last month, UIRR-ERFA and ECTA organized a very successful digital intermodal webinar with over 80 participants explaining how to implement these guidelines based upon practical testimonials from DXI, Den Hartogh and Combinant.
If more info is required on any of the above digitalization topics, please reach out to peter.devos@ecta.com