The purpose of the e-Impact project is to implement the e-Freight standard and e-Delivery infrastructure developed in EU funded projects like e-Freight and iCargo in real operations along 3 corridors of the TEN-T Core Network: The Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic / Adriatic corridors.

The business cases in the project involve shippers, logistic services providers and authorities.
Benefits for the involved parties are:
- Improved efficiency, by sharing planning and execution data to synchronize inter-modal transport and to optimise loading;
- Reduced costs, by automating data exchange between different stakeholders’ systems, including customs and administrations;
- Increased business, by maximizing utilisation of the infrastructures, vehicles and logistics resources in the target corridors.

The business cases will act as forerunners for market adoption and full-scale deployment of e-Freight capabilities on a European and international scale, producing:
- Applied e-Freight solutions demonstrating concrete benefits in industrial implementations, involving regular cargo flows and operational processes;
- Studies assessing the economic viability of e-Freight solutions on the individual stakeholders, on corridor level, and across different corridors of the Core Network;
- Guidelines and requirements for migrating to e-Freight from current systems and architectures, shared and consistent with e-Freight initiatives carried out on European level.

Collaboration has been established with countries in Asia and the project aims to demonstrate interoperability and connectivity between European and Asian stakeholders.

The Action consists of the implementation of an e-Freight system in Italy, Poland and Portugal, with the aim to simplify and reduce the cost of exchanging information between different actors and transport modes along the chain. This will lead to a more efficient, less polluting freight transport, and facilitating the use of multimodal freight transport solutions.

The Action involves four real-life trials in the Core ports of Trieste in Italy; Gdansk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Świnoujście in Poland; and Leixoes and Lisbon in Portugal. The Action will deliver various studies including an e-Freight Adoption Toolkit and an assessment of the e-Freight PPP feasibility, estimating technical, financial and legal requirements on individual stakeholders, at corridor level, and across different corridors of the core network. Building on the pilots' results, the Action will deliver a business model.

CEF programme - project page
CEF programme - e-Impact

The key purpose of the Trieste business case is to link the port to hinterland transportation enabling multimodal journey planning and booking associated to intermodal operations in Trieste (EMT multimodal operator), exploiting the e-Freight Framework. This operation involves Ro-Ro services operated from Turkey and Greece to Trieste and rail connections from Trieste to North Europe, daily linking Italy with Germany, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
The key logistics stakeholders that are involved are:
- Port of Trieste - the meeting point of the trans-European Corridor V and the Adriatic Corridor. It is a gateway position towards East Europe and the Balkans.
- Europe Multipurpose Terminal(EMT) is the Terminal operator that manages the intermodal operations and freight traffic involving: RO-RO services from Turkey/Greece to Trieste and train connections from Trieste to North Europe
- Konmbiverkehr is the rail operator, future beneficiary of e-impact solution. It organizes most of the railway services from and to EMT terminal.

The purpose of the e-Impact business case in Lisbon is to implement multimodal operations planning and execution management over maritime, road, rail and IWT to ensure that cargo efficiently may leave the port as soon as possible after arrival, thereby increasing port capacity without modifying the port infrastructure.

The business case will employ the e-Delivery infrastructure (for logistics) and will be using ISO/IEC 19845 electronic documents as “intermediaries” when providing interoperability between the different stakeholders involved (Port of Lisbon, Inland Terminals, Multimodal Operators, Rail Operator, Freight Forwarders, Rail and Road Infrastructure Managers, and Customs authorities).

This business case is focused on the adoption of e-Freight principles on the Collaborative e- cargo ecosystem being developed by the port of Leixoes, in collaboration with the port of Lisbon. This ecosystem integrates a set of services, solutions and applications for collaboration and multimodal chain sourcing, booking, planning and execution management over the Atlantic Corridor and also in collaboration with other corridors. All types of stakeholders use it: shippers, freight forwarders, terminal operators, multimodal operators, road transport, rail transport, and air transport ground handlers, among others.

Considering the e-cargo ecosystem context, this business case will contribute to the overall objectives of the action by deploying:

- An e-booking (and publishing environment) for freight forwarders. This will take advantage of the service catalogue of multimodal services (using the ISO/IEC 19845 TSD document), and a solution for door-to-door planning and execution management using the other relevant ISO/IEC electronic documents.
- Low cost transport management applications for SMEs for smartphones with embedded e-Delivery connectivity and interoperability.

This business case tackles directly one of the missing links of the Baltic / Adriatic Corridor: the lack of traffic management systems being implemented along the corridor and supporting the multimodal connections with the ports.
This missing link is partly reflected in the fact that currently there is no joint approach to management of operations in Polish Sea Ports and related multimodal services. Moreover, there is no capability to properly support electronic data exchange between business, customs and other administration bodies. Companies are either using their own, not-synchronised ICT solutions or they have no ICT tools in use. E-mail, fax, and telephone are the most popular means of data exchange. All of this results in significant inefficiencies in intermodal transport operations in the Polish territory and also in the integration of Polish Ports into the Baltic / Adriatic corridor.

The Polish ports involved are: port of Gdansk, port of Gdynia, port of Szczecin and port of Świnoujście.

The e-Freight pilot will also handle paperless reporting to authorities. With this system in place, all parties involved (logistics service providers, shippers, authorities, port administration) will use ISO/IEC 19845 standards.