How a global energy company rethought freight tendering

An export-heavy chemicals network, rates fixed for a full calendar year, and a business that asks freight questions every week

This global chemicals producer moves an export-heavy ocean freight program from North America to markets across Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Its annual RFP runs in November and December, locking base ocean rates for the calendar year ahead, with carriers adjusting bunker and fuel surcharges through the year on top of the fixed base.

That structure creates two standing challenges. First, once rates are fixed in December, the team needs a way to know whether its contracted positions are holding up as the market moves, and to prove that performance to the business rather than assert it. Second, the logistics team fields a constant stream of internal costing requests and inquiries, from business cases for new trade flows to questions about specific routes, each of which needs a credible market number behind it.

Benchmarking a chemicals network is not straightforward. The team's spend mixes port-to-port and door contracts, bunker mechanisms, and surcharges such as low sulfur charges that complicate clean market comparison. Before any performance claim could stand, the data itself needed to be comparable, apples to apples, against what the market actually pays.

How Xeneta Helped

A value assessment that proved near-perfect performance, then a platform that keeps proving it

The relationship started with evidence rather than a subscription. Xeneta ran a freight benchmarking value assessment on the producer's contracted ocean rates, mapping its full spend against market benchmarks lane by lane. The result: just $17,000 of $11 million in benchmarked ocean spend, or 0.15%, sat above Xeneta's market high. The assessment confirmed the team was buying well, and gave it the independent proof it had never had.

On subscription, that one-off validation became a continuous discipline. Rate benchmarking tracks contracted positions against short-term and long-term market movements across the year the rates are fixed. Peer comparison places overall performance against other shippers in the chemicals vertical and against shippers of similar volume, and the team has sustained a leader position among its chemical industry peers in that view.

The tender benchmark tool supports the annual RFP, mapping carrier bids against current market rates lane by lane as proposals come in. Market Rate Outlook adds a forward view of 3 to 6 months on key corridors, and Xeneta's team works directly with the producer each quarter to keep its submitted rate data clean and benchmarkable, separating out door components and surcharge structures so every comparison holds up.

How It Works

From quarterly data submissions to weekly costing requests: benchmarking as an operating routine

Each quarter, the team submits its contracted rates, base ocean freight plus bunker, to Xeneta for upload into the platform. Door-delivery contracts are separated out so that only genuinely comparable port-to-port positions feed the benchmark, a data discipline the team maintains together with Xeneta's customer success and data teams.

Day to day, the platform answers the questions the business sends. When internal costing requests and route inquiries come in, the logistics team pulls the market benchmark for the corridor directly from the platform, turning what used to be an estimate into a market-backed number. The performance reporting view runs the same way in the other direction: regular updates to the business on how contracted rates are performing against the market and against chemical vertical peers.

At RFP time, the tender benchmark tool takes each carrier's proposed rates and places them against the live market, showing which bids are genuinely competitive before the team commits to a year of fixed rates. Between cycles, market movement data and the rate outlook keep the team ahead of where the market is heading rather than reacting to where it has been.

Outcomes

Proven performance, a leader position among peers, and market data embedded in daily decisions.

The Broader Impact

Why independent validation matters even when you're already buying well.

Benchmarking is often framed as a savings hunt, but for a team already buying below the market, its value runs the other way: proof. When rates are fixed for a full year, when the business asks weekly what freight should cost, and when a merger puts every function's tools under review, the ability to demonstrate performance with independent data, rather than assert it, changes the team's standing in every one of those conversations.

The same data that validates performance also protects it. Peer comparison shows the moment a leader position starts to slip, the rate outlook flags market turns before they reach the RFP, and clean, comparable rate data means every claim the team makes can survive scrutiny. For a chemicals producer whose freight program was already strong, Xeneta turned that strength from an internal belief into an externally verified fact.