Freightos, Lufthansa Cargo collaborate on instant ‘e-booking’ of air cargo

In an effort to hasten the digitalization of the airfreight industry, online cargo marketplace Freightos has teamed up with Lufthansa Cargo to create a new online portal through which forwarders can compare rates and book air cargo space nearly instantly.

By combining Freightos WebCargo and Lufthansa Cargo’s application programming interface (API) services, enabling forwarders to instantly look up contracted rates, assess capacity and book cargo on specific flights in real-time.

The new system, rolled out last week, can save money and time, Freightos said, considering that e-commerce sales helped lift airfreight demand by 9 percent in 2017. At that time, the company said, “manual airfreight management and sales continued to cost the industry billions annually in changing fees, untapped capacity and manual labor.”

The platform enables hundreds of forwarders to access accurate, calculated prices and book capacity within one portal, Freightos said. Lufthansa Cargo’s main contribution was the application of APIs, which combine Freoghtos’ pricing database with the instant ability to find capacity and book it. If capacity is unavailable, the companies said, the system can be switched to support manual, online ad-hoc pricing.

“Through Lufthansa Cargo web service, we are driving the digitization of our industry to offer our customers and partners a convenient and fast digital interface to our products and services,” said Peter Gerber, CEO of Lufthansa Cargo.

With the new e-booking system, Lufthansa Cargo and Freightos said they can now enable customers to view their contracted price and secure air freight capacity instantly. As their customer, Dirk Schneider, global airfreight director of Röhlig Logistics, explained via a statement, “The new functionality enables rapid quoting and booking of our shipments. Röhlig Logistics customers benefit as one of the first through improved information flow and handling of their consignments. We are happy that we joined the pilot and look forward to extending this service further within our network.”

“Everyone’s talking about air cargo digitization but for most, it’s just talk,” said Freightos founder and CEO, Zvi Schreiber. “It’s fantastic to partner with a forward-looking airline like Lufthansa Cargo for this quantum leap in cargo booking.”

The platform will be expanded globally in coming months, beginning with a rollout in major European markets, Freightos added.