Collaboration is a key pillar of the strategy employed at WebCargo by Freightos, as the company builds a leading platform for live air cargo rate distribution and bookings between hundreds of airlines and 3,500+ forwarders across over 10,000 forwarding offices.
In an effort to make global trade as frictionless as possible, WebCargo embraces the moniker ‘your partners for logistics digitisation’, as they seek to modernise the industry. As the company notes, while international trade is at the core of the global economy, it is powered by a massive global freight market that remains largely offline. This increases costs and reduces supply chain reliability, slowing down the industry and taking away valuable resources from companies
Through its free offering, WebCargo Sky plugs into direct carrier connectivity, providing live air cargo rates and instant eBooking. Save an hour a day or more per team member; WebCargo Air unlocks rate-to-quote capability with the industry’s leading rate management and quotation software, with full TMS integration. WebCargo AcceleRate offers live multimodal rate management with customer quoting tools, driving freight sales and business intelligence at top tier logistics providers.
“We bridge the transition to fully digital air cargo by providing rate management and instant door-to-door quoting tools to thousands of forwarders and, when available, provide them with real-time visibility into actual prices, capacity availability and bookings,” Manuel Galindo, CEO of WebCargo, said.
Connecting the industry
WebCargo’s partners include over 35 airlines, including China Southern, American Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, Etihad Cargo, Air France KLM, IAG Cargo, SAS, Qatar Airways, El Al, and Emirates SkyCargo.
As a company, WebCargo are strong believers in connecting as many air cargo providers to their thousands of forwarders around the world. This was recently seen in their move to add three Chinese master loaders for air booking on their platform.
“Sinoair is China’s number one master loader and in the top ten worldwide. Together with CIMC Anda Shun and Sinotech, these three master loaders are top-tier local master loaders with strong networks and outstanding coverage. In addition, the three master loaders are also innovators in their space, with the right internal technology stack to support instant pricing, eBooking and payments on our platform,” Galindo explained.
“As a truly global platform, we need to adapt the technology to the needs of each market. In the Chinese market, master loaders (quite literally) carry a large amount of weight.”
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Massive opportunity
The Asia market is, of course, a massive opportunity for those in the airfreight market, as much as those who support it.
In many technology sectors, both in the business and consumer space, Western and Eastern users use very different platforms; for example, Alibaba in Asia vs Google in the West. Due to its international nature, global freight cannot afford that type of separation.
“Here at WebCargo we’ve made strong progress in connecting Asian providers including, most recently, China Southern Airlines, and have other exciting plans in store,” Galindo stated.
WebCargo’s numbers ultimately speak louder than words. The company saw nearly 700 thousand bookings on its platform last year. In some European countries, over 10% of all air cargo bookings are placed through its platform.
“Our differentiation is a result of strong coverage, including some unique carriers, our technology that supports quoting and pricing from hundreds of non-digitised airlines, user-first features like saved quotes, CO2 calculations, strong relationships with other technology companies, and more. We stay ahead by working hard and ensuring that we are guided by our customers – their success is our success,” he added.
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Timely transition
WebCargo is moving ahead on every possible front. One of the most interesting directions it is taking is enabling freight forwarder customers to unlock instant pricing and booking directly to their importer and exporter customers. The efficiency from total cross-supply chain pricing and booking is something that Galindo has been thinking about since WebCargo started many years ago.
Carriers benefit from improved sales, lower cost of distribution, and better capacity utilisation. Forwarders save minutes to hours per shipment with faster pricing and booking, while reducing costs and impressing customers with real-time service.
“The air cargo industry typically talks doom and gloom about digitization too frequently. Global freight was an early innovator using tools like EDIs and it remains an innovator today. There are few B2B industries that can boast the rapid growth of adoption of digital bookings like global freight. I’ve seen eager interest from nearly all players, small and large and regardless of location,” the WebCargo CEO said.
