ACCS will provide one-stop services to businesses and traders wanting to network with various organisations such government agencies, to transfer and exchange information between partners and organisations.

The system comprises sub-systems including the System Administration Management System, Declaration System, Financial Electronic Data Interchange, Electronics Payment System, Cargo Management System, Container X-ray Management Programme, Flight Information Display System, Management Information System, Oracle Database Management and the Free Zone Information Exchange.

Supachai Keowsiri, IT director, TAGS Division, said RFID, a technology based on radio waves that can identify an item by an electronic label or tag capable of transmitting data, would track items in the Cargo-Free Zone, increasing cargo-management productivity and providing added value to goods and products in the free-zone warehouse.

"RFID will help not only to reduce time management but also improve efficiency of logistics management, and it also allows us to track the products' origin," said Supachai.

It's expected the use of this technology will reduce the time involved in management of the Cargo-Free Zone from three days to just one, and importantly, reduce the cost of logistics management by about 15 to 20 per cent.

The Cargo Free Zone occupies 568,000 square metres in the new airport. With this space, it can handle up to 1.5 million tonnes of cargo a year. It is expected that its capacity will increase to three million tonnes a year in the next four years and six million tonnes a year in the next 10 years.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation