Drewry integrates freight benchmarks into Cargoo

Drewry Shipping Consultants has integrated its Benchmarking Club data into Cargoo’s ocean freight management platform, allowing eligible shippers to use market rate comparisons and forecasts within their freight procurement workflows. The arrangement connects independent benchmarking with tender evaluation, contracted bookings, and invoice checking, reducing the separation between the information used during negotiations and the systems used to manage subsequent shipments.

The integration is available to Drewry Benchmarking Club members who are also Cargoo customers. These businesses can access their existing benchmark information directly through Cargoo, while companies outside the Benchmarking Club do not automatically receive access to the data. Drewry confirmed the arrangement on 10 November, describing it as a partnership with the Swiss ocean freight technology company.

Contract freight procurement can involve negotiations covering numerous origin and destination pairs, equipment types, shipping lines, and service requirements. A shipper may have different volume commitments on each trade lane, with carrier offers varying according to contract duration and the services included. Comparing those quotations requires the underlying commercial information to be organised consistently before a decision can be made.

Preparation can occupy a substantial part of the tender cycle. In recent polling among Drewry Benchmarking Club members, 44% said they needed five to seven weeks to prepare a request for quotation, while half required eight to twelve weeks to complete the full bidding exercise. The findings describe responses from club members rather than a representative survey of every ocean freight purchaser.

Creating a tender requires expected shipment volumes to be allocated to the appropriate routes and container types. The participating carriers need sufficient information about those requirements to produce comparable offers. Differences in how routes, shipment quantities, and commercial terms are recorded can create additional work when bids are evaluated, especially if information must be transferred between spreadsheets or separate procurement systems.

Cargoo’s platform is designed to connect procurement planning with the later stages of ocean freight execution. It brings tender information, carrier contracts, capacity allocations, shipment bookings, and associated records into a shared operating environment. Drewry’s benchmark data adds an external comparison against which eligible customers can assess the rates quoted by carriers during their tender rounds.

The new functionality places Drewry’s lowest and average benchmark rates against the trade lanes included in a shipper’s procurement exercise. Carrier offers can then be evaluated alongside the corresponding reference figures as bids are received. These comparisons provide additional information for negotiations, although the benchmark is not a guaranteed freight rate available under the shipper’s own contract conditions.

Individual contract prices depend on factors including shipment volume, equipment requirements, service frequency, origin and destination arrangements, and the period covered by the agreement. A shipper seeking guaranteed space over a defined contract term may receive a different offer from one purchasing capacity for an immediate movement. Rate comparisons are consequently most useful when the commercial conditions underlying the figures are sufficiently comparable.

The integration also makes Drewry’s seven-quarter container shipping forecasts available within the procurement environment. These provide a view of anticipated market conditions beyond the immediate tender period, allowing customers to consider the potential direction of freight rates when setting targets or assessing contract duration. Forecasts remain projections rather than binding future prices, and actual charges will depend on subsequent market conditions and negotiated agreements.

Once a tender has been completed, the rate awarded to a carrier must be applied to the bookings made under the contract. The agreement may include separate prices for different routes, container sizes, or periods, alongside capacity commitments and other commercial terms. Keeping this information within the booking system reduces the need to identify the correct rate from a separate document whenever cargo is scheduled.

Cargoo is designed to connect awarded contract rates with the shipments booked through its platform. Drewry describes the integration as allowing bookings to be priced against the agreed rate, with the relevant information retained for subsequent expenditure checks. The companies have not published an independently measured reduction in booking errors or the administrative time required to maintain these records.

Freight invoices create another point at which the original agreement must be reconciled with the movement completed. An invoice can include the base transport rate, surcharges, and other charges governed by different contractual provisions. Comparing those lines with the applicable agreement can reveal discrepancies while the charges remain open to challenge, provided the booking information and contractual terms have been recorded correctly.

The integration supports invoice-line checking within Cargoo, connecting expenditure control with the procurement records used when the original rate was awarded. This creates continuity between tender evaluation and the amount subsequently billed. It does not eliminate the need to investigate disputed charges or establish whether a particular fee is justified under the relevant contract.

Detention and demurrage illustrate the importance of maintaining that information. Detention commonly concerns the time a container remains outside the terminal beyond its permitted free period, while demurrage relates to additional time spent within the terminal. The precise definitions and charging rules depend on the applicable carrier arrangements. Drewry reported that one quarter of surveyed Benchmarking Club members could not state their annual expenditure on these charges.

Accurately monitoring detention and demurrage requires more than an agreed tariff. Container availability, collection, and return events must be recorded, together with the relevant free-time allowances and exceptions. The new partnership connects benchmarking and freight management data, but Drewry has not confirmed that the integration automatically resolves every detention or demurrage dispute or establishes complete visibility of those costs for all customers.

Performance information collected during contract execution can also inform subsequent procurement rounds. Actual transport expenditure, the volume allocated to each carrier, and the rates applied to completed shipments provide evidence for evaluating the previous tender. When these records are retained in the same environment as the procurement information, businesses can compare the outcomes with the assumptions used when their agreements were negotiated.

Cargoo states that its broader platform manages more than one million TEU annually and over $1bn in ocean freight expenditure, connecting more than 4,800 companies across over 100 countries. These are company-reported figures for the platform as a whole, not the volume of cargo or expenditure covered by the newly integrated Drewry benchmarking service.

The partnership does not involve a new freight service, shipping capacity, or carrier contract. Its immediate function is to give eligible Benchmarking Club members access to comparable market information while working with their own tenders, bookings, and invoices. Neither company has disclosed the number of customers expected to adopt the integration or a quantified savings target.

Drewry and Cargoo have therefore linked the evaluation of freight prices with the processes used to execute and account for the resulting contracts. The extent of any operational improvement will depend on the accuracy of shipment records, the quality of the benchmark comparisons, and how consistently customers use the connected procurement and audit functions throughout their freight programmes.