[130514.EN.SEA] More Major Shippers Benchmark Shipping Costs To Find Best Rates

DREWRY's new Benchmarking Club exclusively for importers and exporters is said to be attracting a "fast growing number of major US, Asian and Europe-based international companies, including FMCG, industrial and chemicals multinationals and a top-three US retailer".

Members of the club are given the opportunity to benchmark their shipping costs against their peers and so aid their freight procurement processes.

Member organisations provide their contract rates confidentially to Drewry and in exchange these are aggregated with other members' rates to provide benchmark contract rates based on an average of the submitted rates.

"Drewry's Benchmarking Club enables us to ensure that we secure competitive freight rates with carriers and identify lanes where we could possibly further lower our costs," said Bon-Ton Stores vice president Scott Larson.

"We selected Drewry's Benchmarking Club to benchmark our ocean rates with other retail industry leaders and to gain insight into container shipping market trends, forecasts and best practices through webinars provided to club members by Drewry."

The UK-based research analysts will be publishing an index of contract rates across multiple trades on a quarterly basis to improve visibility of trends (but not actual rates) in the contract market.

Said Drewry Supply Chain Advisors director Philip Damas: "Drewry's Benchmarking Club will also enable exporters and importers, for the first time, to know the sea freight cost advantage of large shippers relative to medium and small shippers." 

Source : HKSG.