Portbase builds Europe’s smartest ports

As part of its mission to create Europe’s smartest harbour community, Portbase partnered with Royal HaskoningDHV Digital to provide vital, real-time information to those using Amsterdam and Rotterdam’s ports. The company now delivers automatic updates on container information and customs declarations.

The challenge

A voyage to the cloud

Working alongside Royal HaskoningDHV Digital, Portbase data engineers and domain experts set out to build a brand-new information platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

By developing its new applications in the cloud, Portbase would avoid the cost and complexity associated with maintaining its own data centre, while also taking advantage of the scalability, power, storage and speed of AWS.

The company began by building a ‘Discharge Confirmation Data Service’. The service allows relevant parties to subscribe to specific container information and see the exact time of arrival of each container in the harbour.

With the new service, APIs allow users to easily connect their existing systems to Portbase and receive real-time notifications as soon as each container is discharged and offloaded into the quay.

This provides a vital level of visibility for every company operating out of Amsterdam and Rotterdam harbours.

The solution

Further change on the horizon

The Discharge Confirmation Data Service replaces a previously cumbersome and time-consuming process that required interactions with various terminal and shipping company websites. With the new, integrated service, users not only save time but also have access to up-to-date-information, which enables faster and more accurate decision making.

Going forward, Portbase plans to develop a secondary service in a similar vein, providing real-time details of customs release confirmations. This will allow clients to automatically declare goods at customs when a container has been discharged.