National Grain and Feed Digital Solutions (NGFDS) officially launched its Barge Digital Transformation (BDT) platform on November 2.
The platform was live for corn bills of lading starting November 1. Remaining commodities, including soybeans, wheat, soybean meal and distillers dried grains, will be available on the digital platform before the end of the year.
The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) announced its official partnership in July with the affiliated organization NGFDS to oversee the BDT platform.
NGFDS has partnered with essDOCS to implement this platform that will digitize barge trading documents so that they may be transmitted electronically –- a huge cost savings to the industry. In particular, the new platform is expected to digitize the approximated 70,000 to 100,000 negotiable barge bills of lading that NGFA members process each year.
“This is truly a momentous development projected to save those of us using barge transportation significant costs now being incurred while greatly improving efficiency,” says NGFDS Chairman Brittany Schaefer, logistics manager at Bunge North America. “My hope is that launching this innovative, secure platform for transmitting barge-related paperwork is just one step toward a future of efficient data transmission throughout the agricultural supply chain.”
Sign up here to be able to use the BDT system.
NGFDS hosted three training sessions for using the BDT platform on Oct. 21-23. View recordings of the sessions here.
