What is a container e-seal?
· Kelvin Oyugi, Technology & Telematics Expert · 2 min read
An e-seal is an electronic seal fitted to a shipping container that locks it, tracks it and reports on it — combining an electronic lock, GPS tracking, door and tamper detection, geofencing and an inbuilt camera in one unit.
A conventional bolt seal answers one question, once, at the end: was this container opened between here and there. If the number matches, nothing happened. If it does not, something did — and you find out at the destination, with no idea where or when.
An e-seal answers the same question continuously. Because the seal is also a tracking unit, an opening is recorded with a time and a position at the moment it happens, and can raise an alert rather than waiting to be discovered at delivery. Where the unit carries a camera, an event can also carry an image of what was in front of it.
That changes what the seal is for. A bolt seal is evidence, gathered after the fact and useful mainly in an argument about liability. An e-seal is an alarm — something that can be responded to while the container is still on the road and the cargo is still in it.
It matters most on the routes where the exposure is highest: transit cargo moving inland from the port, bonded goods that must arrive with their integrity provable, and any load that spends a night parked somewhere nobody is watching.
Like every connected unit, an e-seal depends on the network to report, so its alerting is subject to network and GPS availability. What it records does not depend on the network — the events are stored and arrive when the unit can send them — but an alert only reaches you when there is coverage to carry it.
Read more: Electronic Cargo Tracking System (ECTS)