The Bureau International des Containers (BIC) and SMDG are supporting digitalisation initiatives in the container shipping industry by providing standardised code’s via a combined API enabling users to easily identify through unique global identifying codes container facilities and sea terminals. These codes provide a trusted resource to digitally communicate with each other in a unified way without ambiguity.
Code list are foundational to the success of standards, and are in use globally supporting many things we take for granted, such as bank codes, airport codes, currency codes and many others.
These codes are provided here through API’s (Application Programming Interface) which allows machine to machine communication as well as acting as a source of truth, from which software applications can use when building services for the container shipping industry.
Codes are respectively provided on the website of the code provider and are managed independently of each other, the codes are only provided through the shared API for the benefit of industry.
The BIC Facility Code provides a unique, harmonized code to identify container facilities where container related operations take place for example repair, storage, stuffing/de-stuffing. Following a major harmonization project conducted in collaboration with the DCSA, the BIC Facility Code database now provides a unique identifier for over 17,000 facilities in 160 countries. The vast majority of facilities in the database now include ‘enhanced’ data with a formatted street address and GPS co-ordinates.
For more information visit https://www.bic-code.org/bic-facility-codes/
The SMDG Terminal code list covers the sea container terminals that ships and vessels call at, the terminal code should denote the facilities of a terminal, but not the individual berth at the pier.
For more information visit http://www.smdg.org/smdg-code-lists/
Documentation for the BIC Facility Codes can be found at https://docs.bic-code.org
The Facility code API is documented on the BIC Facility Code SwaggerHub
There is a Postman collection available to assist your integration work: View the Postman Collection Documentation
The BIC promote standardisation and harmonisation in the container shipping industry, and believe that the data should be available under a fair usage approach. So we ask you when using our API’s to be responsible with your calls and usage so the API’s can remain openly available to all, if you require access that is maybe more demanding we have some options available and encourage you to contact us to discuss the best way forward instead of trying to be creative.
The full T&C can be found at https://www.bic-code.org/bic-facility-codes/
We are always interested to hear your ideas for BIC Facility Codes, and to support your journey to integrating BIC Facility Codes into your systems. Please raise a github issue for us to manage these requests, and we will be happy to assist.
Please see attached to assist with understanding usage and support from within industry for use of the BIC Facility Code in messaging and container facility identification.
- https://dcsa.org/resource/bic-and-dcsa-collaborate-to-standardise-container-facility-identification/
- https://splash247.com/container-facilities-get-the-airport-code-touch/
- https://smartmaritimenetwork.com/2021/03/23/bic-and-iana-collaborate-to-standardise-intermodal-facility-ids/
- https://www.msc.com/arm/press/press-releases/2021-october/msc-becomes-first-major-carrier-to-fully-adopt-sta?lang=en-gb