Xeneta Products & Solutions
ROCKWOOL is a leading manufacturer of stone wool insulation for the building industry and value-added applications through multiple brands including Rockfon, Rockpanel, Lapinus, Grodan, Rockpanel, and Technical Insulation.
All brands utilize the benefits of natural stone wool for numerous applications. The company is made up of 11,000+ employees, operates in 39 countries and maintains 45 manufacturing facilities. It spends more than 300M€ for logistics services and ships more than 20,000 TEUs per year.
The Challenge
ROCKWOOL struggled for years with fragmented freight spend, visibility into ocean freight rates and reduced ability to benchmark the company's shipping costs against their competitors. In 2015 the company began exploring ways to leverage new systems and technology to overcome these problems.
“ROCKWOOL's primary challenges derived from international trade routes, particularly Europe to Asia, India to the Gulf, trans-Atlantic, and Intra-Asia routes,” said the International Category Manager Logistics for ROCKWOOL. “Managing freight spend for 55 TEUs on average per day was a logistics nightmare.”
ROCKWOOL needed the ability to quote transport rates for inquiries and shipments to customers. This meant contacting ocean carriers to obtain rates. The slightest change in shipment details could dramatically affect rates, drive away or leave customers dissatisfied, while also creating a loss for ROCKWOOL in transport.
Previously, ROCKWOOL had used non-vessel operating common carriers (NVOCCs) and third-party logistics providers, but ROCKWOOL did not have any real insight into how it ranked against the freight rates offered to other shippers.
A simple attempt to review the past year’s invoices would require a thorough review in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and countless hours auditing thousands of invoices. Still, ROCKWOOL would not have a granular view of spend, broken down to pre-carriage, ocean freight, OTHC, etc.
The Solution
ROCKWOOL chose Xeneta to gain visibility and real change management experience to unlock the value of true ocean freight management. Xeneta's systems allowed for an ongoing review of ocean freight rates, helping the company to understand its position concerning the rest of the market.
Customer service team members are able to check rates in real-time for both contracts with service providers and ad-hoc projects, improving efficiency and competitiveness and reducing costs. In addition, procurement can complete a tender process for ocean freight in a highly educated manner and much more efficiently.
Transparent ocean freight rates mean better accountability. Additionally, the Rockwool user noted the value of time saved. “Instead of guessing if the price quotes they received from several ocean carriers were accurate or fair in the market, Xeneta provided visibility into historical, actual and future market prices for “any” trade lane.”
ROCKWOOL’s success reveals the difference in understanding global ocean freight rates has on a company's health.
