On July 1, 2014 the transition period to mark all European loading units with an ILU-Code (or BIC-Code for containers) runs out. The new owner identification represents a small revolution for continental transport that allows a harmonization with the global container shipping and provides benefits to all stakeholders in the supply chain.
After several years of negotiations involving all modes of land transport as well as manufacturers of vehicles and of loading units, the EN13044 standard was approved with a large majority and no votes against in the CEN, the European Committee for Standardization. Member companies of the UIC, CT operators and terminal managers which are members of the UIRR had decided, in parallel, to implement this standard and remind that the transition period of more than three years provided to identify all loading units used in Combined Transport ends on 1 July 2014. The European Commission and 15 international organizations representing all modes of land transport support the information and press campaigns relating to the implementation of the standard within the DESTINY project.
The most notable advantages of the ILU-Code are that it facilitates the tracking and tracing of the loading units, the check digit avoids unnecessary costs due to data entry errors and enables to automatically register loading units at the terminal gates thanks to the optical character recognition (OCR) and, consequently, to process them in a more rapid and cost effective way.
At this stage, nearly 500 companies located in twenty European countries booked an ILU-Code owner-key. All loading unit holders are reminded that it is high time to identify their cranable swap bodies and semi-trailers with an ILU-Code for use in Combined Transport (Companies holding a worldwide recognized BIC-Code for ISO containers can also mark their European containers and swap bodies by this means).
Information and booking of an owner-key: www.ilu-code.eu
Attachment: information leaflet for logistics companies
http://www.ilu-code.eu/images/Documents/ilucode_logistic_en_111212.pdf
