Hapag-Lloyd launches digital rate distribution on CargoSphere

CargoSphere, the cloud-based rate management platform, has announced a direct data feed of ocean rates and tariffs for the global trade lanes from Hapag-Lloyd, the fifth largest container shipping line in the world, to its customers.

The ocean carrier is the first to offer its customers automatic access to all their contract rates using CargoSphere’s electronic Smart Upload and Diagnostics Solution (eSUDS). CargoSphere said this integration is a dramatic improvement over current labour-intensive industry practices of frequent email distribution of carrier-proprietary file attachments.

Henning Schleyerbach, Senior Director Sales & Service Processes of Hapag-Lloyd, said: “Eliminating the email distribution of spreadsheets and PDFs is an exciting moment for Hapag-Lloyd. 

"We are committed to improving efficiency for our customers and ourselves, and this joint Hapag-Lloyd/CargoSphere integration achievement is an important contribution to the industry as it improves timeliness and accuracy.  We plan to continue differentiating ourselves from our competitors with ongoing innovation.”

Managing Director of CargoSphere, Neil Barni, said, “The CargoSphere team is thrilled to deliver a real-world, ocean carrier integrated, digital, rate-processing solution to the vast global container shipping industry. 

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"It is fast, fully automated and ready to transform the inefficiencies that impede ocean carriers. By accelerating the conversion of ocean freight rates to a fully standardised digital environment we are bringing to market a genuine and meaningful innovation that will move the industry forward.”

The CargoSphere platform offers a 100% digital infrastructure, in which eSUDS establishes an automated data transfer of contract and public tariff rates between an ocean carrier, CargoSphere and the ocean carrier’s customers. Digital contract management significantly increases accuracy and reduces processing times from several days to just a few hours.

Shipper, freight forwarder, and NVOCC customers can now have visibility to their own new or amended service-contract rates as supplied by Hapag-Lloyd to the CargoSphere platform. This provides a much more efficient and timely process to transform this traditionally complex, time consuming, error prone and costly aspect of ocean shipping.

A Drewry Research Study from 2017 determined that the annual labor cost of finding, receiving, processing, and analysing ocean freight buy rates for the global freight forwarding community was approximately $500mn.