Machine Learning & Maritime: Meet Xeneta's Market Rate Outlook

'Ocean container shipping must harness the power of machine learning to protect supply chains' was an overriding message at the Xeneta Summit in Amsterdam.

“While nobody can predict Covid-19 or the Red Sea Crisis, procurement professionals are constantly making decisions based on their outlook for the next few quarters," said Fabio Brocca, Chief Product Officer, Xeneta." When there is so much volatility and uncertainty across global supply chains, providing market guidance feels like an impossible task. The industry has come a long way using technology and data to improve every procurement process, but thanks to advancement in machine learning and AI we can now go even further by providing explainable predictions on how the market is likely to develop in the future.”

Xeneta's new Market Rate Outlook product is unique to the ocean container shipping industry, a machine-learning model that leverages the 500+ million ocean freight rate datapoints in the Xeneta platform, combined with 20+ parameters such as fleet and capacity data, import and export volumes, and macroeconomic factors such as GDP, inflation, PMI and fuel prices.

The outlook also includes commentaries by Xeneta’s market analyst team, highlighting assumptions and key factors affecting the freight rate trends. Finally, Xeneta’s customers can provide real world feedback which is anonymized, aggregated, and used to deepen the market outlook further.

“Market Rate Outlook explains the assumptions behind its predictions so businesses can make strategic decisions with confidence," said Brocca.

In addition to announcing the Market Rate Outlook, Xeneta has launched a series of further in-platform products at the Summit, including enhanced industry-specific freight rate benchmarking and transit time comparison across trade corridors and carriers.

“Whether it is predicting rate trends, index-linked contracts or being able to benchmark freight rates across peers and carriers, it is now incredibly difficult to navigate global supply chains without having access to the most comprehensive and reliable market data,” Brocca said.