AsiaCalculator News

Put your freight on a map!

We've added a new feature to AsiaCalculator's import pricing form: you can now visualize online the freight route you've searched for, with both sea and air routes mapped.

This comes as an additional, side feature - probably not as critical to importers as were the addition of shipping schedules, or the possibility to add several references in calculations.

However we believe this still helps making our service as a whole stickier and always more relevant to importers.

See you on AsiaCalculator.com!

 

Add several products in your import budget!

And another new feature released these days, after the online shipping schedules we published last week.

This time again, we heard our users' feedbacks, arguing that quite often shipments are consolidated with several references.

So we changed the import cost calculation form, and included an option to add up to 10 different products in that calculation.

This allows buyers to get individual import costing for each product (with different buying prices, import duties) while merging all shipped items into one freight budget.

We hope this will add stickiness to AsiaCalculator, and make it even more useful when it comes to import budgeting from Asia!

   

 
 

NEW: get real-time shipping schedules on AsiaCalculator!

We're excited to launch a new feature today: buyers can now access real-time shipping schedules from their AsiaCalculator.com import cost calculation files!

In 2 clicks, importers can now check when the next ships from Asia to their destination are planned for departure, accessing schedules from more than 25 carriers (including Maersk, CMA-CGM, APL, Hapag Lloyd, K Line, MOL, etc).

We tried to make the feature as simple as possible and are eager for feedbacks!

  

Peak season, freight rates hike looming

IFW, an always insightful source, reports on how capacity shortage may bring peak season surcharges earlier than usual.

2 striking & interesting figures pop out: 

• rates increase of around $150-200 are expected per teu
• a good proportion of carriers are already 20% overbooked

This is not great news, and shippers will be once again dealing with fluctuating prices. 

With AsiaCalculator freight quotes estimator, we try to help importers, giving them an instant tool to get market freight prices and be able to budget their imports properly.

Asia - Europe container imports grow 20% in Q1

Read from the IFW website how trade between Asia and Europe has seen significant growth year-on-year in Q1 2010. 

This figure, experts say, should be considered with caution, considering that Q1 2009 was probably the most recession affected period.

This translates into a continuous raise of container freight rates on those routes, although it has been noticed that the rates increase has soften in March and April.

To get instant market freight rates, login to your AsiaCalculator.com acount!

Freight forwarders: manage your inquiries settings

New feature on AsiaCalculator.com, this time for our freight forwarders members: they can now set up how / which inquiries they want to receive from our buyers. This was a feedback we received often, and we decided to implement it.

The idea is for our freight forwarders members to be able to filter which inquiries they want to receive, wether by freight mode (air, sea, sea&air) or geographical destination.

We believe this will allow a better stickiness and relevancy of both inquiries received by forwarders, and rates consulted by buyers.

 

Havoc on air freight as volcano ashes spread over Europe

The last few days have been quite hectic for the air freight industry, as airlines had to ground flights to Europe following the volcano eruption in Iceland.

Announcements were made, here, here and there for example, resulting in freight forwarders being unable to provide updated air freight rates these last days.

Using AsiaCalculator's exclusive freight rates estimator, importers can still access market freight rates online - however for specific requests sent to freight forwarders, we experience delays in replies.

Hopefully, as the sky clears out, the situation should be back to normal within a few days!

AsiaCalculator introduces its new instant freight rates estimator

A limitation to AsiaCalculator service was that it relied solely on the routes quoted by its freight forwarders members (more than 3,000 routes to date); this meant that for some specific searches, buyers could find no result and had to send an inquiry.

This has been addressed by the service’s latest release: an exclusive rates estimator engine which relies on actual freight quotations from AsiaCalculator freight forwarders members, as well as carriers’ information and data intelligence, to return instantly complete, reliable freight rates to any destination worldwide – for sea (LCL, FCL) and air shipments.

Click to enlarge preview 

 

This unprecedented feature allows buyers to:

• find instantly the cost for shipping their cargo from Asia
• build budgets and sales quotations in minutes, with no need to wait for replies from third parties
• compare, challenge, benchmark rates from existing freight forwarders

The estimator is built on sophisticated statistical algorithms which update estimations in real time, and constantly test their accuracy.

This is a breakthrough in the freight rates jungle, where shippers have traditionally low visibility on the pricing of their freight projects.

Details on the freight rates estimator here.

 

3,000 freight routes quoted... and counting

We've just moved past the 3,000 freight routes figure. This means that 3,000 different routes have been quoted by our freight forwarders members on AsiaCalculator.com. 

Not bad, eh? Well, we still want more - the more freight rates we get on the platform, the better the service to our importers, who can find instantly, easily, freight rates for their imports.

Latest entries include: Shanghai to Manaus (Brazil), Yantian to Koweit City (Koweit), Ningbo to Albuquerque (USA), Ho Chi Minh City to Paris (France)...

Check available freight rates on AsiaCalculator!

Note: in the coming days we'll have some exciting new features to announce, stay tuned!

Happy Chinese New Year! Time to budget your next imports...

 As the Chinese Lunar new Year festival has come, it is time for China to take a break and enjoy a full week of public holidays; in the next days we'll thus expect less reactivity from our Chinese Freight Forwarders members.

Well, the good thing about AsiaCalculator.com is that it's never on holidays!

So while your forwarders may not be able to reply your inquiries for freight rates, use AsiaCalculator.com instead, and search for instant rates on more than 3000 different routes from Asia!