South Korea’s container carrier SM Line Corporation has introduced a system to track maritime freight delivery in real time using the Internet of Things (IoT).

The company said on Tuesday it applied a new freight monitoring system that will be controlled by a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) satellite communications system and IoT devices.

It claimed that it has become the first Korean shipping company that can monitor and track the condition of items in a container vessel and shipping in the ocean in real time with the technology.

The technology will enable real-time freight tracking, which is currently available only for inland operation, during maritime operation, contributing to the stable delivery of freight and a timely response to an emergency, the company said.

The technology has been studied to improve service quality along its key Asia-U.S. shipping route. A pilot system is being tested aboard the company’s 6,500 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) container ship that is traveling to North America. A frozen container ship equipped with the technology left Gwangyang Port in South Korea on Nov. 24 is en route to Long Beach in the U.S. via Busan and data on freight conditions are being sent to a central server at SM Line.

SM Line was created in March by Samra Midas Group that bought assets of once the country’s largest container shipper Hanjin Shipping that is now defunct. SM Line currently manages 16 vessels and operates nine routes including to North American, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, China, East and West India.

By Moon Ji-woong and Minu Kim

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