DP World’s freight-rate marketplace soars by 1759%

A whopping 1,759% growth since SeaRates’ acquisition in 2020

DUBAI : Freight-rate marketplace SeaRates By DP World is seeing rapid revenue growth of 1,759% eighteen months after its acquisition by the leading global trade enabler.

Since its launch in 2005, SeaRates, the trusted community marketplace for people to send goods around the world, has been seeking to consolidate its position as a robust digital platform to contribute to the smarter trade movement for cargo owners, freight forwarders or consumers looking to transport goods at competitive rates.

Through the pandemic, the world has been forced to become increasingly digital to keep business flowing.

Mike Bhaskaran, COO Logistics & Technology, DP World„

The vision was to digitise business from easing freight bookings from any origin to any destination, to providing relevant web-based logistics tools to support back, middle, and front office operations.

The DP World brand contributes to SeaRates’s success, adding an extra layer of credibility and a support system built to scale. Additionally, there are several key pandemic factors contributing to SeaRates’s success; ecommerce boom and economies of scale, spot-market appeal to contract rate-based clients and external exposure and commercial growth.

“The e-commerce sector saw a rise in retail sales, from 16 to 19 per cent in 2020, according to UN Trade. This global trend also impacted SeaRates, that essentially is an e-commerce platform to book containers from any origin to destination”, said Mike Bhaskaran, Group COO, Digital Technology and Logistics.

He added: “During the pandemic, the digital movement has gone into full effect as face-to-face interactions become difficult. Through the pandemic, the world has been forced to become increasingly digital to keep business flowing. This inherently turned many traditional cargo owners to seek alternatives such as SeaRates to operate and keep trade flowing”.

Think by ING – the leading Insurance provider, also providing economic and financial analysis – predicts that freight rates are expected to remain above their pre-pandemic levels in the longer term, because of several key factors, such as the absence of a short-term relief due to rising global demand, continued global imbalances pushing prices up further, few alternatives to ocean freight, an unbalanced recovery throughout 2021 and delays from port congestion and closures. Reducing cancelled routes will help ease capacity constraints.

Another factor is that premium cargo owners and freight forwarders with access to contract/fixed rates are finding competitive offers in spot marketplaces, such as SeaRates. This has led SeaRates to attain a new customer, that they would have previously found more challenging to engage.

“We see SeaRates’s trajectory to date as a clear indication of becoming a key freight-rate marketplace provider”, Bhaskaran concluded.