Shippers Gain New Portal to Coordinate Operations

The ongoing workers dispute within southern California shipping ports may have tangled a major supplier artery for the nation, but a new product emerging from Long Beach aims to facilitate shippers’ operations.

The TPM Long Beach Conference held on March 2 revealed a new Private Marketplace hosted by Haven for shippers. The platform, unveiled Thursday (March 5), allows shippers to coordinate and plan their businesses by reserving container slots with the 10 leading ocean carriers and with more than 1,500 shipping ports across the globe.

The Marketplace offers customization for shippers regarding transit times and rates, and serves as a search engine for these services. Shippers, reports say, can also sell slot capacity through Haven.

The Marketplace, Haven said, is the result of a year’s worth of communication with the shipping industry to understand and solve their largest hurdles. “Over the past year, we’ve met with representatives from nearly every major carrier and shipper to understand their challenges,” said Haven co-founder and CEO Matthew Tillman. “Our Private Marketplace is a critical first step in realizing their primary need for an agile yet predictable supply chain.”

In addition to consolidating crucial resources for shippers, Haven also streamlines the various ways shippers traditionally do business to book business and negotiate rates, a process reports say involves phone, fax and email communication. But Haven, the company says, offers a single, neutral platform for all of this communication to take place.

Haven does not disclose to its users the data and transaction information that take place on the product, and the company notes that shippers do not have to pay an upfront cost or install software to participate on the Marketplace.

The product is at least one form of good news for the industry, which continues to navigate the clogged ports along the southern coast of California. According to reports, the slowdown is costing retailers and sellers billions of dollars due to reduced and late inventory.