China opens 1st global int'l e-tagged container route

China has launched the first international e-tagged container route, which was marked by a vessel with e-tagged containers sailed from Shanghai to Savannah on Monday.

The system will strongly promote the safety and efficiency of container transportation, and it will be able to help prevent stowaway and smuggling cases, according to experts.

The e-tags is as small as a doorbell and installed on the latch of a twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU). It can note the information about every procedure the container goes through in the whole transport process.

The information record by the e-tags will be sent to a website for monitoring, through a wireless regional Web network. In this case, the e-tag will note the intrusion if a container is illegally opened en route, and it will put out a red alarm signal on the website.

The system has tested successfully on the container route between Shanghai and Yantai in the eastern Shandong Province. In two to three months, Shanghai is expected to install the e-tags on 10,000 TEU between China and the U.S.