Alibaba and Maersk have joined forces in order to provide an online reservation service for shippers.

The new partnership allows clients to reserve a space on its vessels using Alibaba’s OneTouch platform, which will provide a suite of export services to merchants and include financing and dealing with customs. This is Alibaba’s fastest growing unit in its business-to-business division and has served 20,000 merchants. 

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The new service will cut out freight forwarders, which are middle-men between merchants and shipping lines, and will eventually simplify the export process for merchants. Maersk has started offering the service to Chinese shippers on Dec. 22. Initially, the service is open for eight Chinese ports including Shanghai and Ningbo to locations in Asia and Europe. 

“The initial launch allows existing Alibaba OneTouch users to lock in the price of required cargo spaces on selected routes by pre-paying a deposit amount. This service will be offered on selected routes and ports initially,” a spokesperson for the shipping line said.

The Maersk representative further said that the new partnership with Alibaba is in line with the company’s strategy to provide digital solutions for its clients. It also indicated illustrating a growing cooperation between logistics firms and e-commerce. The world's largest container shipping line is also planning to step further on technologies across more third-party platforms in the near future.

Meanwhile, Alibaba is actively expanding business into logistic services, while other e-commerce companies are also venturing into logistics activities so that will have better control their supply chain networks. Another example is Amazon, which registered a Chinese business to be the company’s freight forwarder and leased an aircraft to handle bulk deliveries in the US.

TagsMaersk, Alibaba, container ship, shipping space, OneTouch Platform, e-commerce, shippers