Drewry Puts Benchmark Rates Inside Cargoo Procurement Platform

Drewry Shipping Consultants has struck a deal with ocean freight management platform Cargoo to embed its freight benchmarking data directly into Cargoo's digital procurement system, moving market rate intelligence out of standalone reports and into the tender workflow itself.

The integration is live but narrowly gated. Only customers who use Cargoo and also belong to the Drewry Benchmarking Club can pull their benchmark data inside the platform. That dual membership condition limits the immediate pool of users, and the companies have not disclosed how many customers have signed up or any measured cost savings from the rollout.

What does the integration actually change?

For eligible shippers, the connection links market rate information with freight procurement, carrier negotiations and contract management in one place. The goal is simple: compare carrier offers against the market, and keep watching transportation costs across the whole life of the contract — not just at signing.

Specifically, the platform displays Drewry's lowest and average benchmark rates for individual trade lanes. Shippers can also access Drewry's container shipping forecasts covering seven quarters.

The practical workflow runs like this:

• Procurement teams set rate targets before launching tenders, using the benchmark and forecast data.
• Incoming offers are compared against market benchmarks during each bidding round.
• Tender results link directly to carrier contracts and shipment bookings.

The audit function is where the integration bites hardest. According to Drewry's announcement, Cargoo checks bookings against agreed contract rates and its freight auditing tools review invoice charges while disputes can still be raised. That means benchmarking stops being a negotiation-season tool and becomes a continuous check on carrier billing through execution.

Cargoo's platform also connects procurement decisions with capacity allocations, carrier contracts and bookings, and feeds shipment performance and spending data back into future tender planning.

Why now? Tender cycles are slow

The partnership lands just as shipping lines and cargo owners gear up for the next round of freight contract negotiations, and Drewry's own survey data explains the timing.

Recent Drewry Benchmarking Club polls show that 44% of participating members need five to seven weeks just to prepare a request for quotation. Half of respondents reported needing eight to twelve weeks to complete the full bidding process.

One finding stands out for its embarrassment value: one in four members could not identify their annual detention and demurrage spend. For teams that cannot quantify a major cost line, negotiating it is guesswork.

The surveys point to a structural problem in freight procurement — collecting shipment data, reviewing carrier proposals and tracking freight costs eats weeks of calendar time each cycle. The integration is designed to compress that by combining benchmark rates, tender management and shipment execution in a single system rather than stitched-together spreadsheets.

Drewry has previously argued that stronger contract terms and freight rate benchmarking are key levers for shippers negotiating ocean freight agreements, and this deal pushes that argument into software.

The open question is adoption. No customer numbers, no published savings, and a membership double-lock on access mean the commercial impact will show up — if it does — in the next contracting season, when the first cohort of joint users run tenders with lane-level benchmarks already on screen.

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By James Calloway for Waybill Wire