Freight has become a finance topic.

When rates swing and reliability drops, “fixed” contracts stop behaving like fixed contracts and budgeting gets messy fast. In this ebook, Hugo Grimston, Chief Finance Officer at Xeneta, explains how leading shippers are shifting from annual rate buying to structured freight risk management, using index-linked contracts and freight futures to protect margins and improve predictability.

What you’ll learn:

• Why freight volatility has outsized impact on margins, budgets, and cash flow
• The difference between freight rate volatility and true freight exposure
• Why traditional annual tenders and fixed-rate contracts struggle in today’s market
• How index-linked contracts align pricing with market reality and support capacity access
• What a mature freight procurement strategy looks like, from benchmarking to indexing to hedging
• Why index quality matters when contracts and hedges rely on a reference rate
• How Treasury and Procurement can work together to introduce hedging without adding complexity
• Real-world lessons from shippers using index-linked contracts to reduce friction and improve budget accuracy