Maritime Transportation And Shipping Talk » Maritime Logistics

A low cost solution for sending a small shipment overseas.

Arild — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:50:31 +0000

If you intend to ship less than a full container load overseas a freight forwarding company can save you a lot of money. The advantages if you are using the service of a broker are that they will handle the shipment door to door. They will provide you with a drop off location for your small shipment or even come and pick it up. They will also follow up that your shipment is delivered at final destination.
If you have the time to ship your cargo or parcel(s) by container it will be your less costly way of getting it to your destination. Shipping smaller shipments that are less than a full 20 foot container can still be your most economical solution if you use the service of a LCL broker. What this broker does is simply collect multiple smaller shipments and packing them in a container that will be sent with a ship. The time involved is longer than if you ship by air but it is also a lot cheaper. Most containers are a week or so at sea before they reach the continent. Americas to Europe for most Shipping Lines are about 7-10 days crossing. Most major industrial centers have freight forwarding companies covering that area and getting a price and time quote would be the right thing to do. Ask 3 companies for a price quote before deciding

How Does Marine Spares Get Processed

Arild — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:58:57 +0000

Over on Maritime Community there was an article about Ship Spares In Transit and what the term means. Here in Canada when a Ship Spares In Transit shipment arrives it is preceded with a pre-notice of arrival containing way bill number, Customs invoice (value for customs), detailed list of all content in shipment including weight. This notice is usually sent from the shipper. Once receiver or receiver agent receives this note they can pre-arrange for custom clearing and forwarding of spares to the ship. The process entails completing various Customs documents that will be processed by Customs once the shipment arrive. In order to complete a process like this the custom broker and carrier has to be defined as a bonded operator. This again means that there is a Bond Insurance filed with the Customs (Federal Government). This Bond is of a value large enough to cover the value of shipments that they would be processing with Customs. There are a variety of different Bonds available and the value can also be very large. It all depends on what the operator would have arranged for and also what the volume of his bond would be. An operator/broker would most likely have sufficient coverage for the volume of business they are processing.
When all these documents are processed and no discrepancy is detected, the actual physical movement of the shipment usually goes rather quickly. In this case we are talking about “Ship Spares In Transit” as it was not to be cleared for payment of duty and taxes. To clear a shipment for and levy duty and taxes would be a whole other process and we will not cover that here.

MaritimeCommunity.com is getting Ready for Re-Launch.

Arild — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 20:19:00 +0000

We here at ShippingTalk have decided to re-activate our sister site Maritimecommunity.com and write about the shore based Maritime Community, especially about the procurement side of the Maritime Industry. Technical Procurement can be very difficult as so many factors are involved. Amongst who is the ever so important Logistic factor – How to get the right part onboard in time!
Shipping Talk staff has been involved in some of these operations for over 30 years and has a solid background in Maritime Procurement and Logistics.
We will be looking forward to some great upcoming articles on that site.

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Maritime Transportation VS Air Transportation

Arild — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:29:37 +0000

I recently did some shipments by Air and Sea. They were of same type, size and weight. The process of getting the shipments ready was very different in many ways. Air transportation has many restrictions that you don’t find in maritime transportation. In a LCL maritime shipment the restrictions are not many as long as you comply with the appropriate documentation to follow your shipment. In the air type shipments you have restrictions regarding the content and the packaging has also to be of approved type for air use. Pressure vessels, batteries, liquids, electronics, they all have some restrictions that doesn’t apply to same shipment going by maritime transport.

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My shipment consisted of 4 pallets weighing approx. 565 kg each. The pallets were of small volume but since the product was a manufactured steel product the weight was rather high. In sending it by air, the first question that was asked was the packing material; in this instance it was pallets made of plastic so there was no problem. If pallets would have been made from wood I would have to have a certificate as to the wood conforming with international law in regards to fumigation and or made in such a way that it comes under that man made section of processed wood. Any wood used in international transportation would have to conform to the heat treatment law for products of this kind. Oh, it also applies to your export product if it is made from wood.
These laws apply to any kind of transportation.

The product itself was made from steel and was coated with a primer only. It was completely dry so there were no gas emissions to be traced. It was wrapped in a clear pallet wrap so all part was clearly visible. Certificates, export declaration and commercial invoice followed the shipment so it was clear sailing both by air and by sea. The writer has been doing this kind of things for many years and don’t usually have much problems getting a shipment out the door but I can easily see how it can be a real headache for somebody that don’t do this kind of things on a more regular basis. There are always many small details to pay attention to and they can easily be overlooked.

The main reason for this kind of split shipment by air and sea was the time limitations on the first part of the shipment. It had to get to the destination as fast as overall possible. The continued part(s) of the shipments had more time and therefore a substantial cost savings using maritime transportation as the preferred mode.

Air transportation in itself is costly but I had various quotes on cost ranging 25-30% in difference. However the same goes for sea, but not as much of a difference, only 10-18% as a comparison. Volume shipping plays a great role here in obtaining good pricing on the transportation.