{
  "id": 9533711,
  "title": "2026/27 Ocean freight bids: Building Risk, Resilience and Readiness into your bid strategy",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/24/2026-27-ocean-freight-bids-building-risk-resilience-and-readiness",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-09-24T10:00:57.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Hellenic Shipping News",
    "slug": "hellenic-shipping-news",
    "url": "https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/2026-27-ocean-freight-bids-building-risk-resilience-and-readiness-into-your-bid-strategy/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The 2026/27 ocean freight bid season brings ongoing uncertainty due to geopolitical disruptions, port congestion, dynamic carrier networks, fluctuating costs, and sporadic service reliability. Securing a competitive freight rate is crucial, but it alone is insufficient. A crucial query for shippers is: \"If circumstances alter post-bid, how effective will our approach be?\"\n\nDrewry posits that shippers can utilize the bid process to tackle three aspects: Risk, Resilience, and Readiness. First, determine your exposure by pinpointing the most significant risks to your supply chain. The significance of these risks will differ based on the shipper and trade lane. Acknowledging this exposure should be incorporated into bid planning, rather than addressing it solely when disruption occurs.\n\nNext, construct resilience by embedding safeguards within the bid. Once the risks are identified, explore how the bid can lessen your exposure. Lastly, ensure readiness by having a contingency plan in place. Disruption is challenging to predict, but your response does not have to be. Utilize the bid process to consider potential scenarios such as congested ports, carrier network alterations, significant freight rate fluctuations, capacity constraints, or the introduction of new surcharges. Identify alternatives and agree on commercial mechanisms prior to their need.\n\nHere are five essential actions for your 2026/27 bid:\n1. Grasp your risk exposure by trade lane and cargo flow.\n2. Avoid relying on a single market outcome – evaluate various scenarios.\n3. Integrate diversification intelligently across carriers, services, routes and ports.\n4. Embed flexibility into contracts covering rates, capacity, and surcharges.\n5. Define your Plan B before awarding – specifying what will prompt a response.\n\nThe 2026/27 bid season is not merely about acquiring the optimal freight rate. It represents a chance to embed risk mitigation into your ocean freight strategy before the subsequent disruption arises. Predicting every market change or disruption is impossible. However, you can create a bid strategy that is competitive, resilient, and prepared to adapt. Successful shippers this tender season will focus beyond price to build freight networks that are resilient, dependable, and primed to adapt. Our Drewry team of ocean freight procurement specialists assists you in SEEING what's changing, PREPARING your alternatives, ACTING with assurance, and ADAPTING as conditions evolve. This involves devising a strategy that transcends securing the lowest possible price and addresses broader concerns like network design, carrier and provider diversification, capacity access, reliability, schedule performance, and risk exposure. By merging continuous market surveillance, thorough preparation, and proficient execution, our ocean freight procurement team can empower you to cultivate the agility and resilience necessary for better-informed decisions, without depending on conjecture.",
  "summary": "The 2026/27 ocean freight bid season comes against a backdrop of continued uncertainty. Geopolitical disruption, port congestion, changing carrier networks, volatile costs and variable service reliability can quickly change the assumptions on which a bid is based. Securing a competitive freight rate remains important – but is no longer enough. A key question for shippers ...",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}