Every year, millions of containers arrive in the Port of Rotterdam and have to find their way across multiple terminals, depots and deep-sea and short-sea connections. With the Container Exchange Route on the horizon — an internal track to move containers between terminals at minimal cost — the Port of Rotterdam first needed the digital layer underneath: a way for shipping lines and transport companies to actually find each other for every exchange.
Together with the Port of Rotterdam we turned the idea into a working prototype fast, and validated it directly with the people who would live in it: shipping lines and transport companies. A continuous-integration pipeline let us ship new features quickly while keeping production stable. React on the front, NodeJS, PostgreSQL and RabbitMQ behind it. Build, test with real users, adjust, repeat.
Streamline became a digital marketplace where shipping lines post transshipment requests and transport companies bid on them. Every step handled on the platform itself, without falling back on phone, e-mail or other systems. The design earned a Gold Indigo Award, and more importantly: the port got the digital foundation for exchanging containers at scale.
