North American cargo handler Consolidated Aviation Services will launch ePic Easy Export, a web-based tool to help 3,000 freight forwarders with the transition to processing electronic air waybills.

The service is scheduled to be rolled out by the end of 2015, and will enable companies to eliminate the use of up to approximately 30 different paper documents for every international air freight shipment.

According to Chuck Zhao, I.T. director at CAS, the new ePic product can provide the impetus e-AWB needs in the US because there is currently no community tool helping those in the industry to change easily to e-AWB.

“ePic Easy Export will help small-to-medium-sized freight forwarders to transmit FWB and FHL messages and create an environment where creating an e-AWB is quick and easy,” said Zhao. “Working alongside airlines that share our commitment to e-AWB acceleration, we will use this simple new ePic tool to progress this campaign with the freight-forwarding industry.”

Zhao added that the e-AWB is a starting point which gives the opportunity to the whole air freight industry to push for a paradigm change.

“We believe e-freight won’t come to fruition unless the operational processes in the warehouse space are paper-free and therefore provide 100% visibility to all the stakeholders – shippers, freight forwarders, customs brokers, trucking companies and so on,” he said. “With e-Pic, data is captured once and is available to all whereas a paper-driven operation will never provide 100% visibility as data is lost in paperwork.

CAS already has more than 3,000 companies using its current ePic Online Customer Service portal every day.