How a global solar energy manufacturer takes market data into every contract manufacturer negotiation

Batteries as dangerous goods, freight costs buried in product pricing, and a market that moved 118% in four months

This solar energy technology manufacturer ships inverters and home battery systems from contract manufacturers in South China and India to distribution centers in the United States and Europe. Around one third of its containers carry lithium batteries classified as dangerous goods, which limits the vessels and carriers it can use and adds a premium that reached $1,000 per container at the 2024 peak. Its main lanes run from South China to Dallas, served through Long Beach by rail or truck, and from South China to Rotterdam, with a growing outbound flow from Chennai.

The team does not negotiate most ocean contracts directly. Contract manufacturers ship on delivered terms, and the freight cost sits inside the unit price the manufacturer pays them. That cost is trued up each month and renegotiated when the market shifts, so the logistics team needs to know what the market has done before the contract manufacturers present their new rates. Without an independent reference, the only answer to “is this the best you can do” was the supplier’s own.

The 2024 market made that gap expensive. Ocean rates on the team’s lanes rose 118% between April and July 2024, taking a lane that started the year at $3,500 per container past $9,000. The team moved from an annual rate book to refreshing rates every two weeks, paid a premium for faster direct sailings to meet a spike in battery demand, and then faced a three-day East Coast port strike in October 2024 and a second strike threat in January 2025, with raw material for a US factory arriving through East Coast ports.

How Xeneta Helped

Lane benchmarks, a six-month outlook, and a quarterly market review for a team that buys freight through its suppliers

The manufacturer uses Xeneta’s Ocean platform as the common reference for its key lanes. Short-term and long-term market rates for South China to the US West Coast, US Gulf and Rotterdam, and for Chennai outbound, show where contract manufacturer pricing sits against the market average and the mid-high range on the same corridor. Surcharge data lets the team build origin and destination charges, fuel and inland transport into a landed comparison rather than a port-to-port one.

Market Rate Outlook adds a forward view over the following three to six months. Because the manufacturer adjusts the freight component of its unit costs at the end of each quarter, a view of where rates are heading matters as much as where they are. Transit time data covers the second question the team fields most often: how long a container from Shenzhen takes to reach Dallas, port to port and then inland.

Around the platform sits a quarterly business review with a Xeneta account manager. Each review covers the market since the last session, the risks ahead such as labor negotiations, Red Sea routing and carrier blank sailings, and the lanes the team is adding as its distribution footprint shifts. Unlimited user licenses mean new team members, including a trade compliance lead who joined through an acquisition, get platform access as soon as they start.

How It Works

From a quarterly cost true-up to a port contingency plan: one benchmark carries every supplier conversation

Before each round of contract manufacturer negotiations, the team lines up three numbers per lane: the rate in the current cost model, the rate from the last reset, and the new quote. Xeneta’s market average and mid-high range sit beside them. When the market dropped 40 to 50% on the team’s key lanes between late 2024 and March 2025, the comparison showed how much of the supplier’s new quote reflected that fall and how much was noise. The team went into the negotiation knowing which lanes, such as South China to the US East Coast, should carry the largest decrease.

The same data feeds the quarter-end cost adjustment. In January 2025, with Red Sea routing expected to ease and Asia outbound rates expected to fall into Q2, the team used the market outlook to plan a reduction in the container costs built into its bills of materials at the end of Q1, rather than waiting for suppliers to pass the saving on.

The benchmark also shapes decisions that have nothing to do with price negotiations. In October 2024, with a second East Coast strike threat due in January, the team used the market review to weigh diverting East Coast raw material to West Coast ports, building a month of safety stock, and keeping a Mexican West Coast port as a backup to Long Beach. In August 2024, when dangerous goods space was scarce, the review established that the premium being quoted for battery containers was what the market was charging, which settled whether to accept it or hold out.

Outcomes

Supplier pricing tested against the market, cost resets timed to the cycle, and disruption met with a plan.

The Broader Impact

Why an independent benchmark matters when someone else signs the freight contract.

Many shippers never see a carrier contract. Their freight is bought by contract manufacturers or forwarders and arrives as a line in a unit cost. For those teams the market data has to do a different job: not to win a tender, but to test what a supplier presents and to time when a cost should move. This manufacturer uses Xeneta for exactly that, and the result is a negotiation that starts from the market rather than from the supplier’s last quote.

The same data does the work between negotiations. Each quarterly review turns market movement into a decision for the quarter ahead, whether that is a cost reset, a port diversion, a safety stock build or a new lane to benchmark. For a lean logistics team shipping dangerous goods through a volatile market, that cadence is the point.