The NOL Group's commitment to IT innovation has been recognised with the presentation of an e-commerce award for e-logistics from a consortium of IT leaders last night.

The NOL Group is a global organization engaged in logistics, shipping and related activities, headquartered in Singapore.

The e-awards were established in Singapore in 2000 and are judged by senior representatives of the high-powered members who make up the e-Awards Secretariat behind the awards; Accenture, Cisco Systems, Compaq, EMC, i2Technologies, Microsoft, CommerceNet, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and Hewlett Packard.

"Our industry is typically regarded as "old economy" - asset heavy and none too fast on its feet. At NOL we're changing that," said Hans Hickler, Senior Vice President, Information Strategy and Customer Support for NOL Group subsidiary, APL. "We're using the strength of our assets and the innovation of IT to change the way we do business.

E-commerce allows customers to transact with us anytime, anywhere, and in any format. E-commerce also cuts the mountain of paper that is associated with world trade," Mr. Hickler added. "That means cost saving for both our customers and us.

NOL Group subsidiary, APL, is no stranger to IT awards. Recently it was the only global carrier to be named in Information Week magazine's 500 list for IT excellence, and the only carrier to be ranked by BtoB magazine as having one of the top B2B website.

NOL is a global transportation and logistics company engaged in shipping and related businesses. Its container arm, APL, provides customers around the world with container transportation services that combine high quality inter-modal operations with state-of-the-art information.

The NOL Group today provides services in more than 100 countries and operates one of the largest containership and Aframax tanker fleets worldwide.

As part of its core business activity, the NOL Group operates a network of container transportation services on major international trade routes. In November 1997, NOL's container transportation division merged with APL Ltd to create one of the world's largest container shipping lines. The new entity now operates under the APL brand name. Apart from container transportation in the trans-Pacific, Asia-Europe, trans-Atlantic, Latin America, intra-Asia and Australia markets, NOL also provides supply chain management services for international shippers through its subsidiary, APL Logistics.