News / New 'dashboard' can help shippers find transport capacity and rate changes

If you are looking for free, accurate and up-to-the-minute data on transport capacity and rate changes, it’s now possible.

Xeneta and Zencargo have launched a free collaborative dashboard to help companies track trends, as Covid continues to up-end planning.

The supply chain recovery dashboard reveals up-to-date shipping rates, pricing trends, lead times and capacity, for major lanes and modes. Xeneta and Air Nav will provide the data and insights, while Zencargo built the customised backend, based on its analysis engine for its digital freight forwarding platform.

A quick search today shows Asia to Europe air freight rates this month are 30% up on last year, while capacity is down 27% against the same week last year, and down 1% from last week.

Sea freight has more detail, with the platform noting that monthly rates from east Asia to the US west coast are up 51.7% year on year, and up 0.2% week on week, while capacity is up 2% on the month. The colours used for the data seemed slightly confusing, but from The Loadstar‘s quick search, the site is easy to use and gives up-to-date insight into market conditions.

“The effects of the pandemic on global container shipping and supply chains have been unprecedented,” said Xeneta chief product officer Erik Devetak. “Everyone is scrambling for data and insight to give some sort of outlook and support better planning.

‘Transport professionals can [now] monitor the market, instantly be aware of disruptions, and ultimately act immediately to plan their next strategic move.”

Zencargo noted: “While demand has started to return, there remains a shortage of equipment and personnel as businesses adapt to the new working conditions. For shippers, this uncertainty creates a huge challenge for supply and demand planning as there are fewer reliable metrics on which to base transport and cost projections. The data that is available is usually provided by carriers or forwarders on a specific basis, making long term comparisons difficult.

“The goal of the Supply Chain Recovery Dashboard is to save supply chain planners time and cost when analysing options. Targeted insight air and ocean rates have seen wide fluctuations over the pandemic as demand and capacity change.”

It added that the dashboard could also help mitigate risks.

Zencargo chief commercial officer Richard Fattal said: “The trend we’ve seen time and again throughout the last few months is that it’s the businesses which have access to proper supply chain data and insight that can cope best with disruption.

“We wanted to expand access to information and help more shippers prepare for recovery so they can start putting the global economy back on track.

“As businesses across the world start to rebuild their supply chains, it will be essential for forwarders, software companies and data providers to continue to work together to support them. This dashboard is the first step on putting the needs of shippers first to help the industry move forward.”