Interview with Andrzej Zelek, President of Polish PCS

Who will the Polish PCS serve?

We are a company established by the most important Polish ports: Szczecin and Świnoujście, Gdańsk and Gdynia. Our role is to integrate digital systems to improve cargo handling in ports. Port Community System solutions operate in most ports in the world. To digitize transport processes. PCS aims to digitize these activities that require paper, emails, involvement of many people, entities, offices. The system will eliminate many of these activities, save time for all participants in these processes in ports and thus save business costs.

The main users will therefore be companies that operate in the market of goods in ports that are imported and exported. In the case of the ship we have ship brokers, pilots, and from the land side we have container terminals, but also mass, general, agencies, offices...

The world already uses similar solutions...

Large ports such as Rotterdam or Singapore have shortened logistics procedures from days to several hours, and even in some cases to an hour. Polish PCS follows these good solutions, we go in the same direction. We use the knowledge used in other ports by being a member of the IPCSA (International Port Community Systems Association). There is no point in breaking down an open door, using good practice to adapt it to our local circumstances.

Isn't it easier to buy, copy good programs?

First, there would be huge money involved. Secondly, it is impossible to apply the foreign system simply because of the specificity of individual countries, I will say more – individual ports. There are different conditions even in our ports, in Gdańsk, Gdynia or Szczecin. This also applies to the offices, even though we are in the EU's condition.

There is no kind of universal solution: we need to integrate systems taking into account our specificity.

You start the piloting system at container terminals?

Yes, we start on November 2 with piloting at container terminals. For starters in Gdynia and Gdańsk, but we also concluded an agreement with DB Port Szczecin, which will already be a participant in the next stage, the implementation of PCS both in terms of containers and bulk and general goods.

What is this testing going to be?

In simplification, we will check the container release system after customs procedures on imports. I would add that, on the seaport scale, our coast is about reducing about one million activities per year. And this is the beginning. Because, ultimately, our system will also include export or transit procedures.

You're interacting with the IRS...

Participation in the pilotage of the tax administration is fundamental. The National Tax Administration allowed integration into the PCS system. As a result, special messages can be sent electronically – the share of paper, man is eliminated. PCS will process documents electronically and direct them to KAS and terminal systems.

You don't interfere with the systems of offices, companies?

PCS is only supposed to synchronize them, make these systems compatible and "talk to each other".

The National Tax Administration has its own IT structures, entrepreneurs who want to import, export goods – also. There's a man, paper, e-mail, even a car that needs to be delivered.

Our system eliminates such activities, so that the entrepreneur or terminal, for example, receives an appropriate customs message in electronic form.

In this way our port community system will accelerate logistics and transport procedures. We save people's time, their work, digitize the process: so that the container or other cargo from the ship, can be unloaded as soon as possible, customsed and left the terminal.

Pilotage involves one of the many utility systems?

Indeed, the automatic release of containers in the import procedure is the first useful for customers. In the next phases we will expand the offer.

Like your new partner, DB Port Szczecin?

Yeah. We have just entered into a framework agreement with this operator with a map of concrete integration of logistics processes. In fact, this agreement has been defining cooperation and the exchange of information for a long time. We know what we expect from each other, how systems are to cooperate, what the terminal expects.

Does the system have limitations?

The system is open to all stakeholders. The PCS system only mediates the transmission of documents, between office, terminal, entrepreneur by digital means.

PCS is transparent. It serves the transmission of digital information from one interested person to another or to the office. It communicates interested parties. We're no competition for anyone either. The value of the system is the role of the integrator with other systems. The final product is a document-communication, simplifying and accelerating logistics processes.

Szczecin has a significant part in the whole project, also the former MGM?

Indeed. Our shareholders are three large ports: Szczecin and Świnoujście, Gdańsk and Gdynia, and we have a lot of support for these ports. But Port Szczecin was a catalyst from the very beginning, helped in the formation of PCS, understood the need to create this entity for its customers, stakeholders.

In Szczecin, we had not only huge support when establishing a company, we also received personal support. From the very beginning, we have an office that does analytics for systems.

And the role of the Ministry of Maritime Economy and Inland Shipping was invaluable. It was at the headquarters of the Ministry of ports – Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin-Świnoujście that the Polish PCS Sp. z o.o. was agreed. Minister Marek Grobarczyk supported our actions from the beginning and patronised the project.

Source: ZMPSIŚ