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Shippers join Cargo iQ performance measurement framework

Cargo iQ has expanded its pre-existing methodology to measure airfreight shipping performance by collaborating with the European Shippers' Council (ESC) to include shippers for the first time. Focusing on service responsibilities, visibility, and performance measurement, the framework sets out door-to-door business scenarios, delineating service scopes and responsibilities, including milestones for handing over cargo, documents, and data to support planning, exception management, and performance measurement. The collaboration will help shippers and freight forwarders use performance data to identify problems and take action to improve the transport process, Cargo iQ - an IATA interest group dedicated to creating and implementing performance management standards for the global air cargo industry - noted. The new framework came to fruition following a series of joint workshops held by Cargo iQ and ESC, a non-profit organisation representing cargo owners/shippers throughout Europe, that have been held since September last year. Moreover, the framework will be reviewed with a larger audience in the coming months and integrated into Cargo iQ's Master Operating Plan (MOP), an IATA-supported blueprint for the standardisation of air cargo processes. Incorporating shippers in the Cargo iQ framework broadens the well-established collaboration between freight forwarders, airlines, and ground handlers to take in cargo owners, ensuring that service performance measures reflect the needs of the airfreight supply chain's ultimate customer. Marie Seco-Köppen, executive director of Cargo iQ, commented: "Involving shippers more closely in Cargo iQ was long overdue. "It is essential to align on expectations and agree on common principles to ensure our performance standard evolves to become valuable for a broader audience." Godfried Smit, secretary general of the ESC, said that the initiative "marks an important step towards strengthening collaboration across the air cargo ecosystem, bringing together carriers, freight forwarders, ground handlers, and shippers. "In today's highly dynamic airfreight market, ensuring that goods reach their destinations efficiently and cost-effectively is essential. Supply chain visibility is a critical enabler of that ambition. "The Cargo iQ initiative plays a key role in establishing a strong benchmark for transparency, efficiency, and seamless collaboration across the industry."

The AI forwarder of the future

Agentic process execution could change the P&L far beyond productivity, and the real gains for forwarders sit in execution quality, margin capture and a new kind of moat. "Innovation and productivity are at the core of what we do." That was the slogan by a global TMS provider in 2016. In the rear-view mirror, most of the innovation has barely moved the needle from a top-down perspective. Productivity of 40 to 60 files remains a common market result. Even if there were some gains, they might have been absorbed: more reports to be maintained, more customer-specific processes to be executed. Ten years on, you will find that claim on every billboard again. However, within the last 24 months, first movers are already realising tangible upside. Large incumbents DSV and K&N do not shy away from concrete, public impact commitments of 3-digit million dollar amounts or individual players pretend to cross the 100 monthly files per person mark. So it is worth reviewing the substance behind, and, more importantly, what it implies in the wider context of the industry. Tackling the AI potential Based on our own experience from building Forto and working with many of the leading global forwarders, we reviewed end-to-end processes of up to 100 steps each: the time each requires, its automation potential, and the time that remains manual: the automation estimates came out up to 82%. We see an evolution of the sources of AI automation over time currently (see graphic). 1. Standard automation through data entry into the system (month 0-12): The obvious one, and where many companies start. Examples: turning a customer's booking email into a booking, updating events or documents or keying commercial invoice and bill of lading data into the system. It sounds simple, but companies will have to build conviction into AI with this first step in our experience, and can't skip it. 2. Orchestration across fragmented systems and rules to deliver better customer processes (month 6-18): Here the work is not copying data but combining sources and applying logic. Quotation is the classic case. The agent pulls rates from carrier sheets and contracts, rate management systems, adds surcharges, applies customer-specific margin rules, checks capacity and assembles the quote. Other examples are cross-checking documents against the booking, and matching carrier invoices to accruals, orchestrating communication and documentation. 3. Coordinating activities that carry their own process knowledge and, hence, deliver customer value beyond (month 18 and beyond): These build on the first two, but they also need an understanding of the process itself, plus the judgment to run it. Examples: handling a delayed or rolled shipment end to end by informing the customer, orchestrating POs and SKU visibility, rebooking and adjusting costs, and monitoring demurrage and detention before charges accrue. AI automation finally correlates with other business outcomes Different than in the past, productivity and automation now works hand in hand with the other goals in the forwarder's P&L. Topline and the ability to compete on prices. Obviously faster and more accurate pricing execution has an impact on win-rates. That is not new. However, in the past, productivity gains have rarely translated into pricing leeway. With material AI cost gains, the automation lever has the potential to change the industry. In a tender where $10 on a submitted rate card decides on the actual nomination, a cost advantage of $50, $70 or $100 per file changes the ability to price competitively. Profitability. Typical gross profit margins range between 15-25%. That makes the gap between two kinds of forwarders decisive: those who extract the last dollar out of every file, and those who can't afford to. A larger part of a file's profit sits in execution, not in the quote or the final invoice. It comes from picking the right partner, watching demurrage and detention closely and keeping accruals actively managed, billing every surcharge. Today that is partly leakage. A well-instructed agent applies the same discipline to every file, it reads the full context from emails, TMS and then follows exactly your process every time, also in peak times or when human operators are flooded with additional work during transport disruptions. Customer experience. The trade-off was customization versus automation. Agents execute what they are instructed to no matter how standardized the instructions are, so capturing a customer's context now becomes a one-off task. It enables consistent execution on an individual level. We found in a recent analysis that up to 30% of relevant customer information comes from the customer's context, such as SOPs, the actual eMail or documents. Building on this context allows forwarders to serve shippers whose requirements used to be too complex to serve profitably, or to replicate their best service levels across regions, segments and products. Even further, capabilities like SOP monitoring in combination with AI exception handling will enable forwarders to get a closer grip on their process and data quality itself. Fast forward: Potential implications Together these effects can potentially double the operating result and, therefore, change the economics of the business model, especially for those at the frontier who are implementing. Looking at a typical forwarder P&L, one can hypothesise that about 60% of the impact traces back to productivity itself. The other 40% sits on the top line and gross profit line, through better execution and less leakage. 1. A material EBIT upside that changes how forwarders are valued. The upside is large enough to change the logic by which companies are valued and evaluated, and the gap between frontier players and the rest will show up in the numbers. Should the productivity gain lead to pricing effects, there is no optionality for the broader market to optimize its operational cost base accordingly with AI automation. 2. The automation gains compound end-to-end. There is good reason to believe that productivity gains in this space will perpetuate themselves. Every automated process produces more context, cleaner data and sharper instructions, which makes the next process easier to automate. It also amplifies the risk profile of early choices: point solutions and the lack of an end-to-end view can become a liability, and what gets built in the early stage can turn into legacy surprisingly fast. 3. Standard process execution is not a differentiator. When players can execute reliably, excellent individual execution is no longer a craft that sets anyone apart. It also exposes niche customization: if you have been winning on a high-customization niche, expect competition from players who can deliver the same customization at lower cost. 4. The operator's role will change. The focus moves from execution to judgment and expertise work. People spend their time on exceptions, as they do today. Many say freight forwarding is a "people business", and this will continue. But the capability organisations need to build changes. The ability to abstract and conceptualise a process, which is what now goes into the prompts and instructions of the AI alongside them, becomes crucial for successful, widespread adoption. 5. The moat shifts to orchestration and context. From a technology perspective, the moat used to be data availability and a high-quality system of record. Now it is orchestrating fragmented data sources and abstracting process understanding and excellence to a level an agentic co-worker can execute. At the same time, customization becomes an imperative, and companies will invest in and extend its contextual layer. Much of what drives operations today is hidden in unstructured data: notes fields, long documents, tribal knowledge. It will become explicit. Productivity has been the promise for ten years. What is new is that the gains compound, and the forwarders who build the layers and new capabilities first will have a clear advantage to set the economics going forward. This article was sponsored by Zauber. Want to hear more? Zauber founder Erik Muttersbach joined Charlotte Goldstone on The Loadstar Podcast to discuss where agentic AI really stands in forwarding today, why adoption matters as much as the technology, and how to separate genuine capability from the hype. Watch the episode here.

'Redeployment and agility' key to continued success of LNG transition, says CMA

CMA CGM's decision to be an early mover in LNG bunkering, amid the decarbonisation push, has paid dividends, according to the French carrier's VP for bunkering and energy transition, Farid Trad. At last week's Singapore International Bunkering Conference and Exhibition (SIBCON), he recalled that In 2017, CMA CGM signed the first of a few 10-year agreements under which compatriot energy major TotalEnergies supplied 300,000 tons of LNG annually to the carrier in Rotterdam. Deliveries commenced in 2020, using an LNG bunkering vessel commissioned by Mitsui OSK Lines for long-term charter to TotalEnergies. Mr Trad said: "When you look at what is happening 10 years later, you can't help but say what we have achieved is enormous. We went through the Ukraine crisis in 2022 after Covid, and now we have another geopolitical event in the Middle East. What's certain is that any future strategy will be a combination of security of supply, decarbonisation, and competitiveness. Finding the holy grail will be around those three dimensions." In July 2025, CMA CGM and TotalEnergies announced a new 50:50 joint-venture for LNG bunkering logistics in the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp region, expanding their long-term cooperation and scaling supply up to 360,000 tons annually through 2040. In conjunction with SIBCON, CMA CGM announced it would work with Singapore LNG Corp, which operates the LNG terminals, and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, to develop liquefied bio-methane as a marine fuel at the world's largest bunkering port by sales volumes. By going upstream and operating its own LNG bunkering barges, Mr Trad said, the French shipping line was assured of fuel for its LNG dual-fuelled ships. CMA CGM, the third-largest shipping line with a fleet of nearly 4.5m teu, has 157 containerships of 1.6m teu on order, all to run on LNG dual-fuel. Explaining CMA CGM's choice of LNG, Mr Trad said the gas reduced health hazards due to lower sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. Alluding to uncertainty in environmental regulations, he added: "To invest in the long run, we need some certainty on regulation, which is lacking today. Discussions are still ongoing at IMO. We are still waiting to see how it will all fit together. "When we order a ship, we order it for 25 years. So we always need to have a longer view on where we're standing and you have to go through different crises, ups and downs, [fuel] prices could be up, prices could be down." He said CMA CGM saw agility and pre-deployment as key success factors, given the repeated supply chain shocks since 2020. "The key critical point is not the potential demand, but the ability of the network of LNG bunker barges to be wherever we require them in terms of agility. "One of the key things is that redeployment and agility is one of the key factors to managing the container shipping fleet. So we need to be able to change trading patterns as quickly as possible. And for that, we need bunker barges to be available in all ports when we possibly need them. Not only in huge bunker hubs like Rotterdam, Shanghai, and Singapore, but there are other ports that are either secondary or less important."