Air cargo still relies heavily on paper documentation for the exchange of shipment information. Each international airfreight shipment can require more than 30 different paper documents – increasing the cost of airfreight and lengthening transport times.
The AWB is a critical air cargo document which serves as a contract of carriage between a Forwarder and the Carrier. eAWB was an initiative by the industry and IATA has been promoting it since 2008. eAWB removes the need of a paper Air Waybill exchange between ground handler/Airline and forwarder. eAWB is an initiative developed with regional stakeholder representatives to eliminate paper Air Waybill (AWB) and replace it with electronic data interchange (EDI) message formats. This significantly simplifies the air freight supply process.
The eFreight initiative is being implemented in several countries across the globe. The initial focus is on attaining 100% eAWB worldwide. The first step towards eAWB is to enable online filing of AWB by the Freight Forwarder through EDI with airlines. Kale’s eAWB EDI platform is an access to this Digitalisation process.