Jim Preuninger CEO Amber Road

Amber Road (NYSE: AMBR), a leading provider of global trade management solutions, has announced that Azelis, a top global specialty chemicals distributor, has signed a worldwide contract with Amber Road for an automated restricted party screening solution.

After a decade of rapid international growth, Azelis today combines more than 37 specialist distribution companies in a single organization serving the worldwide life sciences and industrial markets. It conducts around 430,000 export transactions annually with more than 50,000 trading partners around the world. The management complexity created by the sheer volume of trade transactions is exacerbated by the increasingly tough regulatory environment governing international trade.

As a group active with companies throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and Canada, Azelis must take special care not to ship products to any entities present on restricted party lists maintained by countries that host its network companies. In addition, due to contractual requirements from some of Azelis’ United States-based suppliers, Azelis also must comply with restricted party lists in the US and with embargoes imposed by the US Government. Without a comprehensive and automated system, tracking fast-changing regulations on a global basis and continually evaluating existing and new trading partners is extremely difficult.

Realizing it needed to prevent illegal transactions and protect itself from potential fines, penalties and sanctions, Azelis sought an automated screening solution that would also reduce operational costs by eliminating time-intensive manual screening processes. In searching for the right solution, Azelis emphasized high accuracy and a low rate of false positives as key requirements.

Ultimately, Azelis chose the Amber Road restricted party screening solution, in large part because of its deep trade content, ease of use and comprehensive functionality.

“Amber Road’s ISO 9001 process for updating trade content within 48 hours gives us vital confidence that we will remain compliant even in the face of changing regulations,” said Gerrit De Vos, Chief Compliance Officer at Azelis. “We were also impressed by how easy it is to use the solution and yet at the same time its automated screening of transactions is comprehensive and powerful.”

The proven ability to reduce false positives to consistently less than 0.5% and strong references in other BENELUX-headquartered global companies were additional factors in Amber Road’s favor.

In its need for comprehensive restricted party screening, Azelis’ situation reflects that of virtually any company involved in international trade. Recent developments, such as the sanctions and restrictions on Russia as a result of the Ukraine crisis and the more than $10 billion in fines expected to be imposed on French bank BNP Paribas related to breaches of US sanctions on Iran and other countries[1], bring the need into even sharper focus.

Amber Road CEO Jim Preuninger said, “Azelis’ decision to ramp-up its compliance is very timely. With headlines touching on Russia, Syria, Iran and other markets, and increasing regulation, trade compliance is top of mind for many companies.”

Amber Road’s solution is to be integrated with Azelis’ ERP system, with a planned rollout to 33 countries in stages starting with an Azelis entity in Belgium.

About Azelis
Azelis is a leading global distributor of speciality raw materials, representing first-class manufacturers across Life Sciences and Industrial applications. Our activities are built on decades of experience. Founded in 2001, the company has grown by bringing together more than 37 successful companies, many with a history going back over 100 years. We employ more than 1,100 people with offices across Europe, Asia Pacific and Canada. Around 70 per cent of our employees are in customer-facing roles.

Our business is industry-focused and organised around International Business Areas. Life Sciences includes: Personal Care, Pharma, Food & Health and Animal Nutrition. Industrial covers: Chemical Industries, Coatings and Rubber & Plastic Additives.

In each of our chosen specialised market sectors we provide high-quality support and service for our customers and principals at an international, regional and local level. We have an industry-dedicated sales organisation and our teams have specialist product and application expertise, which combined with our business know-how, enables us to add value in all of our business relationships.

About Amber Road

Amber Road’s (NYSE: AMBR) mission is to dramatically change the way companies conduct global trade. As a leading provider of cloud based global trade management (GTM) solutions, we automate import and export processes to enable goods to flow across international borders in the most efficient, compliant and profitable way. Our solution combines enterprise-class software, trade content sourced from government agencies and transportation providers in 139 countries, and a global supply chain network connecting our customers with their trading partners, including suppliers, freight forwarders, customs brokers and transportation carriers. We deliver our GTM solution using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and leverage a highly flexible technology framework to quickly and efficiently meet our customers’ unique requirements around the world. 

For more information, please visit www.AmberRoad.com

[1] WSJ May 29 online.wsj.com