Hong Kong’s One Record trial shows flexibility for sea-air cargo

The adoption of proposed industry data exchange standard One Record has been gathering pace, and recently operators in Hong Kong marked a major milestone with the first shipment transported by sea-air from the Greater Bay Area via Dongguan.

The milestone is part of a joint pilot scheme between Cathay Cargo and the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) to trial a sea-air multimodal solution to transport cargo from Dongguan for export to other countries via Hong Kong.

IATA’s ONE Record initiative enables end-to-end transparency for consignments, logging progress as they pass through multiple links in the chain from shipper to agent, airline, warehouse and statutory authorities such as customs, following IATA’s protocols for APIs – the interface that enables users to connect to the system, and share data in a secure way.

Cathay said this marked the first time that IATA’s One Record was made available for sea-air, which saw air cargo bound for Bangkok, Manila and Tokyo from forwarder Yusen Logistics.

The cargo was accepted at the Cathay Cargo Terminal in Dongguan and passed through AAHK security there, with cargo acceptance logged outside the origin airport’s cargo terminal. That acceptance was registered as an acceptance milestone on ONE Record. The system then generated data notices when the bonded shipments were unloaded for export at Hong Kong Airport. From there, the shipments triggered the normal ONE Record shipment milestones as they completed the journey until the collection by the eventual consignees.

One Record is scheduled to be implemented in 2026, according to IATA, and the airline said the pilot showed its value in enabling premium services like Ultra Track and other use cases.

“This pilot also showed ONE Record’s flexibility, and being able to accept cargo from an upstream cargo terminal and then log its transit by boat was a world first,” said Cathay Director Cargo Tom Owen.

Yusen was able to follow progress by logging into their account in the one-stop digital cargo-management system, EzyCargo™, using an interface designed by Global Logistics System (GLS), one of the pioneers in developing IATA ONE Record technologies who led the technical and system readiness work for the pilot.

“ONE Record will really help enhance the collaboration among supply chain stakeholders, especially for shipments from the GBA, and it will improve visibility for our customers,” noted Cyrus Chan, Manager Air Freight Forwarding Division at Yusen.

“ONE Record is gaining traction and will become the global standard, and we are keen to be an early adopter to align with industry best practice and future developments in air-cargo operations.”