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Today's oceans contain 26 to 66 million tons of waste, with approximately 94 per cent located on the seafloor. So far, the efforts to collect the waste have focused mostly on collecting it at the surface, with only a few local efforts to gather underwater waste, mostly using human divers. The SeaClear project funded by Horizon 2020 is breaking new ground. Cosmin Delea and Johannes Oeffner from Hamburg-based Fraunhofer-Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML explain the strategy.

The international logistics companies Dachser, DB Schenker, duisport and Rhenus have now established the Open Logistics Foundation in Berlin. The purpose of the non-profit foundation is to build a European open-source community aiming to promote digitalization in logistics and supply chain management based on open source and standardize logistics processes through de facto standards. Not only is a technology initiative like this unique in logistics to date, the founding members are also taking on a pioneering role as to the future topic of open source.

With the establishment of new laboratories and testbeds at Fraunhofer IML, the National Centre of Excellence for Logistics and IT now enables the specific transfer of research results to industry, aiming at an international audience. The important topics in which the researchers do not least offer market overviews and perspectives of new technologies and systems in Germany and Europe include highly innovative picking methods, exoskeletons for use in logistics, or mixed reality (XR) in education and training.

»Ledger Man«, the superhero, is supposed to make blockchain technology more tangible, know and popular. It is quite a while ago, that the Blockchain Europe NRW team had the idea for the funny cartoon character. In the meantime, there are already five episodes as video in cartoon style.

The crypto currency "LogCoin" which is based on the blockchain technology should enable the conclusion of smart contracts in logistics. The start-up LedgerEngineers – a Fraunhofer IML spin-off – has been pushing this ahead for some time on the basis of the research in the institute, however, in the B2C area. CFO and Co-Founder Natalia Broza-Abut talks about the origins and objectives of the young company to make logistics more digital with "LogCoin" – and the commitment to the European Blockchain Institute.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML together with eleven other project partners are receiving funding of around 10 million euros from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) for the joint research project "Financial Big Data Cluster" (FBDC). The project aims to advance applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) for the financial sector.

Stuttgart-based software provider AEB SE and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML are working together on a blockchain-based customs solution. The goal of the project, which is part of the Blockchain Europe research initiative: Develop end-to-end digital and largely automated customs processing.

Insight informations about the Digital Logistics Award 2021.

Not least because of UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the export and import declarations required as a result in goods traffic with the UK, digitization of customs clearance has gained considerably in importance. In this context, scientists of Blockchain Europe, the research initiative to establish the European Blockchain Institute in North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW), are currently working on a generally digital and largely automated customs clearance. Roman Koller, customs sub-project manager at Blockchain Europe, on the actual state of affairs.

Digital technologies mean new opportunities for growth and prosperity: in Europe, this is not different from Africa. In the DIGILOGIC project, European and African Digital Innovation Hubs have now come together under the direction of the Digital Hub Logistics from Dortmund to share best practices and learn from each other – in the first pan-European-African network with a focus on smart logistics solutions. Toyin Dania, project manager of DIGILOGIC at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Accra, Ghana, on opportunities and possibilities for cooperation.