Over 100 logistics stakeholders, representing public authorities, transport companies, service providers, ports, customs, shippers, terminal operators, users and research organizations, met in Brussels, Belgium, for the official start of a new groundbreaking European project.
Coordinated by ERTICO – ITS Europe and with a total funding of €16m (US$18m), AEOLIX is a three-year project co-financed by the European Union (EU) under its Horizon 2020 program. AEOLIX involves a consortium of 34 partners who will develop a digital ecosystem to enable various actors at different levels and of different sizes, with different systems and platforms or even without own in-house systems, to better manage, plan and/or synchronize freight and logistics operations across Europe. The AEOLIX digital ecosystem will improve data end-to-end visibility across the supply chain, enabling more sustainable and efficient transport of goods across the continent.
The AEOLIX Pan-European logistics platform is expected to reduce energy consumption and thus greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30% compared with the current situation. The AEOLIX digital ecosystem will be tested, validated and implemented in 11 Living Labs representing logistics business communities across Europe covering the nine TEN-T corridors: Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Spain and the UK. AEOLIX has started its activities with a two-day working meeting at which the whole consortium is determining the challenges, goals and timeframe of the project development. This is considered to be the perfect moment to start AEOLIX, as the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum launched by the European Commission’s DG MOVE in 2015 will present the recommendations concerning future business models for a harmonized platform on transport and logistics during its plenary meeting on September 20.
The AEOLIX Innovation platform will be launched this year and will help deliver information to bigger and more geographically spread groups of business and logistics communities. The AEOLIX consortium is extending an invitation to any local, regional and national business communities, associations, standardization bodies of logistics and supply chain interested in being among the first to further exploit the results of the AEOLIX dashboard and toolkit. The AEOLIX Innovation platform is also welcoming other third-party providers who would like to contribute to the implementation of AEOLIX 2.0, with extra services and toolkits.
“We are proud to start this activity with major players in the industry, and look forward to welcoming more companies, organizations and authorities to participate in the AEOLIX Innovation platform,” said Lina Konstantinopoulou, AEOLIX coordinator and head of transport and logistics at ERTICO.
Zeljko Jeftic, head of innovation at the International Road and Transport Union (IRU), stated, “AEOLIX will create a strong business environment toward a collaborative approach in the industry supply chain. It will reduce the complexity of operations and paperwork and pave the way for a pan-European digital network. We look forward to working with such important stakeholders to strengthen the cooperation of the freight and logistics community in Europe as a whole.”
