Countdown to the ILU-Code 19/09/13

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There is less than one year left before the date of 1 July 2014 when all craneable semi-trailers and swap-bodies will have to be marked with an ILU-Code in order to be allowed in Combined Transport. For the owners of loading units who have not already got one, it is high time to register their ILU-Code owner-key and to use it to mark their loading units.

After years of negotiations, the representatives of the different transport modes and the manufacturers gathered in the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) in 2010 agreed on the introduction, in European land transport, of an owner identification for loading units, which is compatible with the system in use for decades in worldwide container transport. The European association for Combined Transport, UIRR, has been entrusted with the administration of the ILU-Code (abbreviation for Intermodal Loading Unit). All related information can be found on the dedicated multilingual Website, which also enables to easily register online. The official Register, containing already several hundreds of logistics and leasing companies from 21 European countries, can be consulted on this same portal. An early registration is recommended as this is the first step in the marking of all the loading units of the owner.

The benefits of the ILU-Code will affect every actor of the combined transport chain, mainly thanks to a better performing Tracking and Tracing system, as well as savings in personnel costs through a reduction in data entry and transmission errors, and the possibility to use optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which enables faster shipping.

The ILU-Code has the following structure:

Related documents
Press release DE EN FR
Leaflet for logistic companies DE EN FR
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