HAKKA takes participation in DigiTrans

Hakka, the owner of a digital collaboration and e-commerce platform for container logistics in Antwerp, takes participation and integrates with DigiTrans, a spin-off of the University of Antwerp and imec. DigiTrans’ expertise is in developing back-end AI-based algorithms for data interpretation and planning, which are a perfect fit with any transport management system or data platform used in logistics services.

In February ’21 HAKKA closed a deal with DigiTrans. Both companies concluded that a closer collaboration is of mutual interest and will accelerate their business expansion. Their shared strategy to implement new technologies driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the transport market, urged this common move forward. ‘The structural encapsulation of the DigiTrans’ AI expertise and its strong technical entanglement with both the University of Antwerp and imec will make HAKKA a number one digital logistics player in the center of Europe’, says Peter Hellinckx, Professor at imec and UAntwerp and co-founder of DigiTrans. “An integrated data processing solution like this one is the necessary and logical step towards a more efficient transport sector”, adds Silvia Lenaerts, UAntwerp vice-rector Valorisation and Development.

Moreover, through this collaboration, DigiTrans will benefit from a new opening to the market, and, on the other hand, HAKKA will be able to use AI algorithms to increase the quality of their platform’s services. “Building an AI solution and expertise center for logistics is an important step in the future strategy for Hakka.”, says Kris Kerremans, CEO and founder of Hakka nv.

A first tangible HAKKA-DigiTrans solution

DigiTrans developed an AI-based application called, Data Entry Assistant (DEA), which is an application to structure transport order data. The DEA is a back-end algorithm that can be linked to any unstructured data source, like PDF, Excel and Word documents, or even emails, to read and interpret content. Once a full scraping and classification of this data is done, the DEA produces standardized information that can be read by a TMS, ERP or WMS. It is ‘almost like riding a bike with no hands, the planners can keep on pedaling to complete their tasks and the DEA does the dirty data-entry job’, says Valentin Cârlan, Manager of DigiTrans.

The DEA is a perfect add-on to the HAKKA matching algorithm. The matching algorithm for container rides (the orders for transport) of HAKKA can work efficiently if there are sufficient orders in the platform at a certain moment. “Our internal statistics show that the more data we have in the platform, the more matches can be suggested. Lately, we observed that road transport operators are unable to add data to the platform as it requires too much manual effort. Adding each field of information from emails to the HAKKA matching platform is time consuming and error prone”, says Kris Kerremans, CEO and founder of HAKKA. The DEA from DigiTrans is a perfect addition to this system and can eliminate a great barrier for our customers.

Unchanged and secured future

It is not easy to sell digital services in a sector where there are barely any profit margins, definitely not in the middle of a worldwide crisis where it is impossible to grasp on tangible perspectives. DigiTrans is convinced that by joining forces with HAKKA, it can further speed up the development of the DEA, and also expand their offering to other types of digital assistants for planning, quotations and/or data analytics.