Danish container giant Maersk’s spot pricing tool — Maersk Spot — has been integrated with another logistics platform, Global Price Management, according to Portrix Logistic Software which owns the platform.
Maersk Spot is a digital platform launched last year which aims to simplfy the process of booking cargo space on Maersk ships with full price transparency.
The link with GPM, which claims to have 12 of the top 20 global freight forwarders on its platform, will give the industry greater access to Maersk Spot.
According to Henning Voss, co-founder and CEO at PLS, using Maersk Spot is like booking an airline ticket online.
“A customer looking to make a booking would access Maersk Spot and then leave the tool to compare other options. As they were doing so the prices might change.
“However, with integration into GPM, a user has everything they need at their fingertips, giving them the ability to see both real-time competitive spot rates and their contracted prices.”
In late January, Maersk Spot linked up with Indian freight forwarding platform Freightbro.
Booking cargo onto ships is largely a manual activity involving a lot of back and forth communication between various stakeholders.
GPM, Maersk Spot and Freightbro point to the increasing digitalisation of that process.
