We have excellent relationships with leading ship owners and operators worldwide as well as in house the expertise needed to ensure your product is shipped safely and effectively, at optimum cost, and with the least possible risk.

Optimising transport costs

A number of our operations team came to us from the shipping and logistics industry. This helps enormously from an experience point of view to work effectively with ship inspectors and owners, providing appropriate instructions when we charter vessel space and providing a full brief when product is loaded.

For example, we make it a point to stay in contact with a ship on a daily basis when we have cargo aboard. We are also able to track our ships in real time by satellite. This means we can manage and minimise the incidental costs that can arise during a voyage as a result of delays or changes in the route, by giving good accurate arrival and departure times as well as the voyage time itself.

Helping you play ‘above your weight’

One of our areas of expertise is in putting together multiple cargoes to make a single shipment (parcelling up) and, on arrival, in breaking down large-volume shipments into smaller deliveries (breaking bulk). The fuller the ship, the lower the costs and the more economic are the freight charges. Conversely, without a sufficient level of loading, it may not be economically viable for a ship to sail. Our ability to parcel up a full load may be the deciding factor in whether product can be moved or not.

This has been particularly beneficial for smaller customers who may not have the scale of operation, geographic reach or size of requirement to operate alone in large-volume international markets. In many cases we have been able to give these customers access to these markets for the first time.

It can also create new market opportunities that did not previously exist. For example, we have a particularly strong track record in parcelling up shipments to a size where costs are reduced sufficiently to open an arbitrage window.