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Shipment intelligence
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Written by Admin
Updated over 9 months ago

Shipment Intelligence

Why is Shipment Intelligence relevant?

The Shipment Intelligence solution from A-INSIGHTS provides insights into international trade. Through

extensive cleansing and mapping the Bill of Lading is no longer just a shipping document, it captures

intricate details of the shipment lifecycle. Dive deeper than just statistics: gain insights in supplying &

importing companies, the price dynamics per player and a unique product split.

Types explained

  • Customs = means data is provided by customs of that country and we have full data of its trade.  For example, India makes its data available directly for all shipments by road, sea, and air so it includes data of all importers in India.

  • Mirror = refers to additional Bill of Lading data and customs records given by trade partners. Additional Bill of Lading data is provided by sources other than customs.

Additional note: Some countries take a long time to update or complete their data (such as Moldova, Morocco, etc.). Also, additional B/L data is not provided on a regular basis.  Since data of mirror countries is based on its trade partners’ data and additional B/L data,  number of shipments for each month may change during the year. We upload all data collected from different sources to a single database. When you search for a country with any search criteria on our platform, you see all data available in our database at that time. For example, in data of the last year, there is additional B/L data which has not been updated for this year yet.

Dual vendor strategy

To come to the best end result possible, we at A INSIGHTS use a dual vendor strategy. This means that, we combine the input of different sources to get to the best data. In this case:

  • DataSur = US Imports and Argentina Exports

  • TradeAtlas = 73 other countries

Cleaning step - Product cleaning and deepening

Bill of Lading data is very unstructured and messy (e.g. a lot of typos, wrong HS classifications and unrevealed potential for more detailed splits). To make it actionable, an extensive product mapping approach is used, consisting of both

automated and manual steps. To highlight the most important ones:

  • Filter out irrelevant shipments incorrectly categorized under a certain HS – too often it happens that shipments that doesn’t have anything to do with the labelled HS code end up it the wrong category. Not correcting for this will have an impact on data quality and misconceptions about trade volumes and values

  • Deepening Product classification – based on more than 1,000+ mappings dividing the HS Code 200410 (Frozen Potato Products) into Frozen French Fries, Frozen Potato Specialties and Other

Cleaning step - Harmonizing exporters & importers

Taking an unique multi step approach, covering in total more than 40,000+ mapping to get

to cleaned list of exporters and importers. This multi-step cleaning process involves cleaning based on:

  • Exporter and Importer names mentioned in product descriptions

  • Brands of exporters or importers mentioned in branding columns

  • Notify party for importers to get the end customer in scope instead of the logistic partner

  • Derive exporter and importer based on the combination of port of origin or departure and country of arrival

Cleaning step - Normalizing weights and values

Dense process consisting of multiple steps (presented in the order of processing)

  • Cleaning unit of mass (e.g. kilogram, pounds, tons) in order to ensure that all data can properly be presented in kilograms as the default unit of mass

  • Take the Net Weight Original if filled – when net weight is applicable we prioritize the net weight as presented

  • Search for net weights mentioned in the product description – for all known net weight values historically present in the data, a search is carried out together with the word “Net weight” or synonyms like “Net WT” Quantity to Net Weight – for all values in the “quantity” column and having a “quantity unit” of kilogram, the net weight is calculated

Coverage

Country

Type

Coverage Total trade – 2020-2022

Angola

Customs

197%

Argentina

Customs

116%

Armenia

Mirror

13%

Australia

Mirror

16%

Azerbaijan

Mirror

59%

Bahrain

Mirror

38%

Bangladesh

Mirror

258%

Belize

Mirror

26%

Bhutan

Mirror

266%

Bolivia

Mirror

99%

Botswana

Mirror

355%

Brazil

Customs

68%

Brunei

Mirror

18%

Burkina Faso

Mirror

42%

Cambodia

Mirror

19%

Cameroon

Mirror

181%

Chile

Customs

96%

China

Mirror

52%

Colombia

Customs

103%

Congo

Mirror

16%

Costa Rica

Customs

80%

Côte d'Ivoire

Mirror

183%

Djibouti

Mirror

43%

Ecuador

Customs

109%

Egypt

Mirror

8%

Fiji

Mirror

68%

Georgia

Mirror

27%

Ghana

Customs

175%

Hong Kong

Mirror

12%

Indonesia

Customs

59%

Japan

Mirror

33%

Jordan

Mirror

3%

Kazakhstan

Customs

218%

Kuwait

Mirror

26%

Lebanon

Mirror

19%

Malaysia

Mirror

29%

Mexico

Customs

65%

Moldova

Mirror

660%

Mongolia

Mirror

63%

Mozambique

Mirror

205%

Namibia

Mirror

90%

Nepal

Mirror

115%

New Zealand

Mirror

14%

Nigeria

Mirror

24%

Oman

Mirror

21%

Pakistan

Customs

180%

Panama

Customs

119%

Paraguay

Customs

91%

Peru

Customs

104%

Philippines

Customs

102%

Qatar

Mirror

29%

Russia

Customs

101%

Saudi Arabia

Mirror

32%

Senegal

Mirror

8%

Sierra Leone

Mirror

21%

Singapore

Mirror

17%

Somalia

Mirror

34%

South Africa

Mirror

19%

South Korea

Mirror

41%

Sri Lanka

Customs

197%

Suriname

Mirror

6%

Taiwan

Mirror

40%

Tanzania

Mirror

98%

Thailand

Mirror

46%

Ukraine

Customs

87%

United Arab Emirates

Mirror

16%

United States

Customs

22%

Uruguay

Customs

120%

Uzbekistan

Customs

249%

Venezuela

Customs

53%

Vietnam

Customs

158%

Zimbabwe

Mirror

175%

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