For many moving companies in the UK and elsewhere, trade groupage for household effects is common in the private market.  But elsewhere in Europe it’s not.  In the world of corporate moving, it’s rare. EasyGroupage, started two years ago in Paris, is changing that.  It’s making groupage easier, improving movers’ margins and helping introduce the concept to corporations intent on reducing relocation costs and their Scope 3 emissions.

Raphael Baptista explained that EasyGroupage is an online platform through which companies can post available space in containers, and part load shipments, and bring them together.  “We act as a trusted third party,” he explained. “The moving companies never meet. We consolidate everything door to door.”

It’s the platform that makes EasyGroupage different from anything that has gone before. In the past, groupage services could only be offered to popular destinations where containers were filled quickly enough to provide an acceptable transit time for customers. Even then, shipments would often take 4-6 weeks longer than FCLs to the same destination.  But EasyGroupage is using the platform to fill containers that are going anyway, helping to keep transit times down and opening up groupage services to many more destinations

Raphael explained: “By using EasyGroupage, movers can increase margins by using spare space; they can move small shipments much cheaper than using LCL services; create their own groupage lanes even if they don’t have enough traffic of their own; and compete directly, for example, with US companies on US to Europe traffic.”