Announcing the Freightos Freight Index – A New Benchmark for Global Freight Market Trends

Use it for procurement planning and contract negotiations to reduce guesswork and operate without over-reliance on sporadic signals.

The index translates market signals into lane benchmarks, emphasizing transparency and consistency. It supports navigating market moves and uses a documented methodology that highlights projected trajectories and flags deviations, so you can align procurement with the actual market, not rumor.

In practice, disruptions such as strike actions, port slowdowns, and schedule shifts occur. The index provides a counter to volatility, showing how price movements move against them and helping you navigate them. For shipments from china suppliers, it highlights premium windows and price paths, enabling proactive decisions rather than reactive responses during disruption. Agents across the network can use these signals to align contracts and service levels with market reality. And when markets are disrupted, the index still provides actionable guidance.

To operationalize, implement a 12-week rolling window, refresh data every days, and set alerts for corridor moves beyond a threshold. This framework supports navigating price cycles with confidence. Integrate the index with your ERP or TMS to support making timely decisions. Build additional scenario analyses for considering several futures to reduce exposure to price spikes.

With transport strategies, you can quantify savings and set guardrails against volatility. The index acts as a common reference for teams across logistics, procurement, and finance, helping you align decisions and measure progress against the global baseline.

Recommended Reading: Freight Index Overview and Practical Takeaways for Global Freight Trends

Begin by utilizing the Freight Index overview to anchor your 12-month freight plan within your procurement cycle, focusing on the most impactful movements in rates, volumes, and lead times.

Past data show improved reliability in inland corridors, while port segments present varying conditions; this helps you detect minute-by-minute shifts that drive mitigating actions for the most exposed particular lanes and to address concern about outages.

Key components to watch include the rate index, the volume index, route mix, and port dwell trends, emphasizing the link between rate moves and port dwell times; they may find patterns that lead to more accurate forecasts.

Operators should seek diversified capacity, secure contracts when index momentum aligns, and expand use of alternate ports to reduce reliance on a single route; this support for resilience helps manage risk across markets.

For logistics management teams, integrate index cues into daily planning, utilizing signals for congestion and lead times, and develop guidance for procurement that accounts for seasonality and market conditions. Whats guiding your decisions is how you operationalize the index cues into procurement.

Past readings emphasize the most relevant markets: Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America; utilizing this view, seek regional diversification, expand supplier panels, persist in monitoring port conditions to avoid a block in supply.

What the Freightos Freight Index measures and why it matters for daily freight pricing

Recommendation: Use the Freightos Freight Index to set daily price bands and automate adjustments across routes.

The Freightos Freight Index tracks daily spot rates for air and ocean freight across major corridors. The latest data is initiated from official quotes and forwarder submissions, then cleaned and published for logistics teams. It captures initial price movements on routes including Europe–Asia and trans-Pacific lanes, with airline networks and airport hubs shaping the numbers. Airlines and forwarders rely on the index to manage exposure and spot relief when disruptions arise. Prices cannot be predicted with certainty, but the index provides a reliable signal to reduce risk and support continuity in budgeting and procurement.

What it measures and why it matters

• Coverage of key lanes: the index aggregates data from multiple corridors to reveal where price pressure concentrates.
• Frequency: daily updates give the first visible moves, helping you react quickly.
• Source integrity: data comes from official quotes and forwarder submissions, reflecting real market dynamics.
• Impact on life and operations: the readings feed procurement plans, factory scheduling, and manufacturing input costs.
• Disruptions and response: political events or border restrictions pose risks; the index helps you plan capacity, redeploy options, and maintain continuity.
• Relief planning: use the latest numbers to design relief buffers in budgets and contracts.
• Over-reliance mitigation: using a broader signal reduces over-reliance on a single route or supplier.
• Whats driving rate moves: fuel costs, capacity shifts, and policy changes influence daily readings.

How to use the index in daily pricing

1. Establish a baseline for each core route using the latest index value.
2. Set alert thresholds (for example, a 5% move on your top lanes) to trigger a review with forwarders and airlines.
3. Apply initial adjustments to your budget and procurement plan to reflect the signal.
4. Coordinate with official carriers and forwarders to secure capacity and minimize disruptions.
5. Monitor political developments and european responses to policy shifts that may pose risk to routes and airport operations.
6. Review monthly results and refine your response to index-driven changes to improve continuity.

This article offers practical steps to leverage the Freightos Freight Index for daily pricing and procurement actions.

Data sources and calculation basics for practitioners

Begin with a targeted data strategy: identify three core streams, validate them weekly, and align with business goals. For practical tracking, integrate maritime data from shipping lines and port authorities, production calendars, and voyage schedules to capture real costs and lead times, and sync with your production schedule to ensure you meet demand.

Core sources include maritime AIS and port call data for lane-level visibility, official trade statistics for baseline demand and products, especially high-volume commodities, and carrier tariffs and invoices to quantify expenses. Supplement with production calendars and order backlogs to spot capacity constraints; zealands route data captures regional variation; cillox data provides price signals across many lanes. Combine with inventory and bookings to build a complete picture.

Calculation basics: normalize prices to a base period, choose weights by freight value or volume, and aggregate by route or region. Clean data by removing outliers and flagging gaps; apply seasonal adjustments to remove predictable patterns; adjust for currency movements when reporting in a single unit. The result is a timely index at the forefront of market signals, which helps practitioners compare current costs with a wide historical frame.

Implementation steps: set up a data pipeline (ingest, transform, validate), align with procurement strategies, and publish a simple dashboard. Use the index to guide decisions across many teams: whether to lock in contracts, adjust inventory, or reroute shipments. When a decline occurs, isnt always clear whether it reflects a seasonal pause or a lasting shift, so maintain flexible responses.

Risks and opportunities: data gaps in zealands lanes challenge reliability; reliant on a single vendor can increase risk to businesses. Build cross-source validation to reduce this risk and keep the teams at the forefront aware of changes. The ongoing opportunity is to meet tight budgets and production schedules by spotting trends before rivals, capturing opportunities across many markets.

Update cadence and how to interpret volatility in freight markets

Set a three-tier cadence: update the SCFI-based index daily at 09:00 UTC, publish a weekly volatility digest, and run a monthly regime review. Refer to the SCFI baseline to anchor signals and compare against your regional flows. The daily update keeps your team aware of shifts in flow, blockages, and tariff adjustments that affect expenses across networks and assets.

In practice, core lanes show week-over-week moves that can range widely. Over the last 12 weeks, main trunks on Asia-to-Europe and Southeast Asia-to-US routes swung from -6% to +9% in a week, while the 4-week rolling volatility hovered near 5%. Use these benchmarks to calibrate what counts as a normal drift versus a meaningful move that warrants action. Your focus should be on the change magnitude, not just the level, since a small shift on a crowded lane can cascade through multiple players and airports.

Interpret volatility with a straightforward framework. Classify regimes into calm, moderate, and stressed by week-over-week changes and the four-week standard deviation of changes. If the weekly change stays within ±3% for two consecutive weeks, you’re in a calm phase; moves beyond ±6% signal a stressed phase likely driven by bottlenecks, cancellations, or tariff announcements. Track the flow on critical corridors against a baseline so you can identify whether the shift is driven by sector-wide factors or route-specific constraints.

Key drivers to monitor include blockages and bottlenecks at airports and ports, airline capacity adjustments, and tariff announcements that alter the economics of different commodity baskets. Pay special attention to shifts in Southeast corridors where networks and terminals can quickly tilt competitive dynamics. If a disruption hits an anchor node, volatility can spill into adjacent routes, affecting both expenses and lead times. Keep an english-language note in the briefing to ensure your department and partners across partners can refer to the same signals.

Translate signals into actions across your teams. If volatility spikes on a lane you rely on, consider reallocating assets to guard against cancellation risks and to maintain service levels. Engage with carriers on more flexible playbooks and explore alternate airports or networks to reduce exposure. For commodity-heavy flows, reassess tariff exposure and unit costs, and reroute to minimize cost impact while preserving reliability. Your response should balance cost discipline with service quality, preserving competitive stance in the face of shifting demand and capacity plans.

To organize this, align roles across departments and players. The planning team tracks flow and bottlenecks; the commercial team monitors tariffs and expenses; logistics partners manage the actual movement through networks and airports; and the english-language briefing ensures consistency of interpretation across the stakeholder table. This coordination helps you anticipate shifts in the block, shift, and expansion of routes in the southeast corridors, while maintaining ongoing visibility of the SCFI trajectory and the broader market context.

Comparing the Freightos Index with existing benchmarks: use cases and caveats

Use the Freightos Index as a leading indicator to corroborate existing benchmarks, not replace them. Run a 6-week parallel track with small cohorts to validate alignment with spending and earnings signals. This upgrade should be designed to preserve compliance while you observe how entry timing and capital deployment respond.

These indices support three practical use cases: course planning and budgeting across worlds of trade; improving selling negotiations with carriers; and risk management as capacity and rates shift, emphasizing integration with compliance.

Note that the Freightos Index is designed to complement, not replace, legacy benchmarks. Differences in scope, sampling, and timing mean signals can diverge during quarter ends or major capacity events. In zealand, as in other worlds, massive blocks of data from a single region can distort cross-country comparability; use these caveats when interpreting week-to-week moves and avoid overreacting to a single block of data. Shifts in trade lanes also affect goods transported and capital allocation.

To implement this approach, align cross-functional owners on a simple, 4-6 week plan. Start with a small set of lanes, keep a tight data contract for entry and weekly updates, and maintain a strict compliance checklist. Build a dedicated dashboard that shows the Freightos Index alongside the relevant indices and your internal metrics. If signals diverge for more than two weeks, trigger a structured review with the leadership and the capital planning team. Notes from (buchman) suggest triangulation strengthens reliability.

Thats why triangulation matters: use the Freightos Index together with these existing indices to anchor decisions in a volatile market. Rely on a mix of information streams to avoid overreacting to a single block or week. Probably the most effective approach is to keep the upgrade incremental, implement in small steps, and monitor the impact on entry timing, spending, and earnings across worlds.

Guidance for shippers, carriers, and forwarders: turning index signals into actionable plans

Implement a 90-day playbook that translates Freightos index signals into concrete actions with clearly assigned owners and measurable KPIs. Align the signals with three levels of urgency–short, mid, and long-term–and tie each level to routing, container allocations, and port decisions.

Directly map signals to routing choices and container deployments: select routes with lower congestion, prioritize ports with reliable discharge, and adjust carrier mix based on futures and volatility. Entering peak seasons, commit capacity and establish contingency reserves to mitigate disruptions.

Create initiatives to seek mitigating measures such as diversified suppliers, regional relief programs, and commodity-specific contingencies for coal and other critical goods. Implement structured efforts to curb price swings, improve schedule reliability, and maintain a cadence of quarterly reviews.

Set up a central dashboard and visit it weekly to root decisions in associated datasets – port performance, intermodal options, terminal dwell, and hinterland availability. Maintain closer collaboration with forwarders and carriers to align plans with execution, and support marketing teams with timely capacity insights.

Plan for futures by coordinating regional initiatives across vast markets and substantial trade lanes. Use index signals to refine routing, select strategic ports, and reduce transit times, while keeping an eye on relief options for congested corridors and those tight in capacity.

Taking these steps: assign owners, document actions, and track effect on service levels and costs. The result is a tighter feedback loop that informs those entering the market and those expanding regional footprints, delivering clearer guidance for container flows and multimodal choices.