The Digital Era is really and truly upon the shipping and freight industry..

Investors are showing great interest in funding the digital capabilities displayed by the role players in this industry and one of the main role players who seem to be capitalising most on this seems to be the Digital Freight Forwarders..

One such digital freight forwarder, FreightHub founded in Berlin in 2016, is the latest beneficiary of such investment..

FreightHub, who have been termed as Europe’s first digital freight forwarder, announced today that they have raised USD30 million in its Series B financing round..

The funds come from Rider Global, a venture fund founded by logistics experts as the lead investor alongwith new investor Maersk Growth which is the corporate venture arm of A.P. Moller-Maersk who have been funding other digital ventures as well..

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The funding also included existing investors Northzone, Global Founders Capital (GFC), Cherry Ventures with London based investment firm Unbound significantly expanding its stake..

Unbound, founded by Shravin Mittal is focused on deploying long term capital in industry changing tech companies and sees Freighthub as a good fit..

Commenting on this occasion, founder and CEO Ferry Heilemann. “Our recent growth trajectory has confirmed the potential that our digital solutions can realize for both our customers and FreightHub’s internal processes. We will use the fresh capital to further develop our digital service offering and to expand our presence in Asia. With Maersk Growth, we have onboarded a new investor that offers extensive strategic insight and allows for mutual collaboration opportunities.”

Ferry Heilemann co-founded the company in 2016 together with Erik Muttersbach (CTO), Michael Wax (CCO) and Dr. Fabian Heilemann, who currently serves as Chairman of the Shareholders’ Advisory Board. Dr. Michael Ardelt (COO) joined the company in 2017..

“FreightHub is a well-run company with a promising technology in the digital freight forwarder segment. This makes it a great fit with Maersk Growth’s investment strategy which aims to explore and mature promising technologies with a potential to improve supply chain management and customer experience.

As a digital leader in container logistics, we believe in cooperation and learning experiences across the digital ecosystem of our industry. We look forward to accompanying FreightHub in further developing as digital freight forwarder and believe our cooperation can help both companies build on their capabilities and offerings to the benefit of existing and new customers in the SME segment.” said Jeppe Høier, Partner at Maersk Growth..

Timur Boridko, managing partner of Rider Global, emphasized: “As a fund with a deep focus on logistics, we can note that the company is in a favorable position among its competitors. Well-built business processes, coupled with good IT, are the key to success in building a rapidly developing disruptor in a complex industry. We believe in the team and are confident that the company will become the market leader in the near future.”

New digital solutions and offices

Last year, FreightHub invested heavily in solutions for digital collaboration among customers, partners and suppliers and expanded the interface functions for its system integration capabilities and also expanded its service portfolio, through the newly obtained IATA license for air freight services..

As a fully-fledged freight forwarder, FreightHub offers transport services for sea, air and rail freight, built on digitized processes – from booking, communication, data exchange and document management to supply chain optimization..

FreightHub already leverages their platform data for detection of deviations and proactive notification of customers which enhances their service offering to their more than 1500 customers.. Home24, Miele and Viessmann are some of the major customers who use FreightHub’s services..

Michael Wax, CCO of Freighthub explained that “Our forwarding solution offers more transparency, reliability and ultimately time and cost advantages for large and mid-sized organisations. Today, we serve some of the most renowned German brands and tripled our year over year volume.”..

Apart from offices in Berlin and Hamburg, the company opened its first Asian office in Hong Kong and recently acquired a sea freight forwarder specialised in Asian imports..

The future

“What sets us apart in particular is the combination of experienced logistics experts, data-driven and therefore robust processes as well as state-of-the-art technology,” emphasized CTO Erik Muttersbach. “So as to open up further control and optimization options for our customers on their way to a data-based supply chain, we will continue to invest heavily in the development of new features, such as complete planning and control of orders at product level.”

In addition to technological investments also FreightHub plans to expand its Asia operation.. “The aim is to expand our existing network and provide a broader range of complex logistics services. A stronger presence in Asia will allow us to handle the processes on site independently and thus enable us to offer our customers a seamless end-to-end process,” said COO Dr. Michael Ardelt.

Source Link | Shipping and Freight Resource