The Company
A Europe-headquartered global liner agency and freight logistics group with three decades of experience, operating across a worldwide network of offices and agents and serving hundreds of destinations. Its services span ocean freight, breakbulk, liner representation, and port handling, moving full-container and consolidated cargo for clients across multiple trade regions.
A significant share of its container volume moves as transshipments, where cargo transfers between vessels at intermediate hub ports before reaching its final destination. Tracking these movements accurately and providing clients with reliable arrival information is central to the service the company provides.
The Challenges
Before adopting Portcast, the company relied on carrier-only tracking feeds and manual reporting, which left gaps in both data quality and lead time.
Carrier-only visibility with unreliable data
Their previous tracking provider relied on carrier feeds without AIS-based vessel tracking, resulting in missing container numbers, incorrect locations, and inconsistent milestones, undermining confidence in ETAs. Arrival dates were not always shared promptly by carriers either, adding latency on top of inaccuracy.
No predictive ETAs or delay context
Without AI-driven predictive ETAs or delay-reason data, operations teams could not get ahead of rollovers, idle containers, or transshipment risk. Every disruption was handled reactively, after the fact.
A looming data blackout on a critical trade lane
A meaningful share of container volume moves as transshipments through one key carrier, and that carrier's planned retirement of its web-tracking feed threatened to cut off a core data source entirely, forcing an urgent search for an alternative.
Manual, hours-heavy tracking and reactive service
Teams relied on manual Excel and VLOOKUP reports to track specific container lists and fielded a high volume of inbound "where is my shipment" calls, with no early-warning system for accruing demurrage and detention charges.
The Solution
After trialing Portcast's data quality directly against their incumbent provider, the company chose to partner with Portcast, won over by stronger AIS-based tracking, predictive ETAs, and Portcast's ability to ingest data directly from their key transshipment carrier. Integration into their TMS and go-live followed within weeks of signing, delivered in partnership with their systems-integration partner.
- AIS-based ocean tracking with live map visualization, closing the gaps left by carrier-only data feeds.
- Predictive ETAs (pETA) with delay-reason context, shifting the team from reactive tracking to early, proactive disruption management.
- Direct data stitching from their key transshipment carrier, sourced through their integration partner rather than the carrier's own public feed, matched by booking reference and merged with Portcast's carrier-network data into a single container-event stream. This resolved the carrier's planned tracking feed retirement and fed straight into their TMS.
- White-labelled, embeddable tracking UI (map view and container journey) deployed straight into their platform and out to end clients, with no in-house development required.
- Custom bulk-reporting and automated error-log monitoring, built with their integration partner, to flag containers that go missing from carrier feeds and cut down manual list-tracking work.
The Impact
The company saw measurable gains in data quality, accuracy, and team efficiency after moving onto Portcast.
- Lifted data completeness to around 97% across all carriers by combining AIS and terminal feeds, closing the gaps left by carrier-only tracking.
- Improved ETA accuracy to around 93%, seven days before arrival, strengthening SLA commitments to clients.
- Cut manual tracking and data consolidation time by around 85%, freeing up operations staff previously spent reconciling carrier data.
- Cut exception-resolution time by almost 40%, through earlier visibility into rollovers, idle containers, and transshipment risk.
Curious how Portcast can cut manual tracking, improve shipment visibility, and reduce costs? Get in touch to explore how.
