Regulatory Challenge
EU counter-terrorism regulations introduced a requirement for shipping lines to provide advance cargo information for all vessel calls to European ports. In Estonia, this translated into the implementation of national customs systems — ICS and ECS (Import and Export Control Systems) — which all shipping lines needed to comply with before calling Estonian ports.
For each shipping line, building a direct integration to the Estonian customs platform individually would have meant navigating the national X-Road data exchange protocol, mapping their own data formats to customs requirements, and maintaining those connections over time. Across a dozen shipping lines, that meant the same problem solved twelve times — complex, expensive, and duplicated.
Solution: Cone Center EDI Integration Service
Rather than waiting for individual shipping lines to solve the problem separately, Cone Center approached Estonian customs directly and proposed acting as a trusted data provider — a single integration layer between shipping lines and the national customs systems.
The service handles the exchange of bookings, bills of lading, manifests, equipment data, IMDG cargo declarations, counterparty information, ports of loading and discharge, notifications and related documentation. Each shipping line connects to Cone Center once. Cone Center handles the translation, validation and routing to Estonian customs on their behalf.
The result is that shipping lines comply with regulatory requirements through a managed service rather than maintaining their own technical integrations with national systems.
Outcomes & Long-Term Operation
All major container shipping lines with vessel calls in Estonia are connected through the service. The integration layer has been in continuous operation since 2011, handling regulatory data exchange across every vessel call without interruption.
For Cone Center, the EDI service demonstrates a capability that extends beyond terminal software — the ability to identify a structural problem in a port ecosystem, engage directly with national authorities, and build a shared service that the market relies on.
Stakeholder Perspective
According to an Operations & Logistics Manager at one of the connected shipping lines:
"EU customs regulations required every shipping line calling Estonian ports to comply — fast. Rather than each of us building separate integrations, Cone Center stepped in as the trusted data layer between us and the Estonian customs systems. It saved us significant manual work and complexity."
