E2open’s Ocean Shipping Index reveals 70-day average to ship freight globally

New quarterly report helps shippers better understand when to book ocean freight to help ensure goods arrive on time and mitigate risks of downstream disruptions

E2open Parent Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ETWO), a leading network-based provider of a mission-critical, cloud-based, end-to-end supply chain management platform, released a new quarterly report that tracks ocean shipment delivery times from booking freight to receipt of goods, across major trade lanes between Asia, North America and Europe to help importers mitigate risk and make better decisions on when to book cargo.

Based on information from E2open’s business network, which encompasses 26% of all global ocean bookings and has visibility into more than 40% of international container trade, the E2open Ocean Shipping Index provides a data-driven reference for shippers to understand how long it takes to move goods internationally as well as the factors that contribute to observed delays.

Key findings from the Ocean Shipping Index include:

• Overall, lead times have steadily increased across all lanes during the last 12 months, requiring shippers to budget more time for transporting goods
  
• In the third calendar quarter of 2021, the average global shipment took 12 more days, or 23% longer, than the same period last year
  
• The two most significant factors were a rise in time between the booking to gate in at the port, up 43%; and the ocean transit time, up 36%
  
• Overall lead times from North America to Asia took 17 days longer than from Asia to North America, or 25% longer
  

“Ocean transportation is the backbone for world’s largest supply chains and critical to the flow of goods that power global economies,” said Pawan Joshi, executive vice president of products and strategy at E2open. “Successful operations require an accurate understanding of how long it takes to ship freight, especially for just-in-time supply chains. Detailed understanding of the time required for containers to arrive at the port, clear customs and be ready for pick up by ground carriers is the key to streamlining port operations and decongesting logistics operations. Transportation volatility – driven by high demand, container shortages and port congestion – has made historical lead times unreliable, increasing the risks of disruption in downstream production and customer service. Among other things, this quarterly index provides a new level of visibility so that shippers can better understand when to book capacity for goods to arrive at the required date.”

The Ocean Shipping Index adds to a growing list of benchmark reports available from E2open to help the industry navigate the increasingly complex global supply chain, including the annual Forecasting and Inventory Benchmark Study, monthly Freight Market Index and dynamic Freight Rate Index.