Maximizing revenue for each container load is becoming more important as cargo receivers look constantly to drive down transport costs.
For New Zealand fish products group Talley’s this presented a unique challenge. The company’s seafood division — Amaltal Deepsea — runs a fleet of deep sea fishing vessels equipped with automated processing facilities. Fish are processed onboard within hours of being caught. Everything is used, including fish waste, which is converted into high-grade byproducts such as fish meal and oil. When exporting fish oil, Talley’s used a pump and hose to discharge the oil into a 24,000-liter flexitank.
But, the firm’s onshore logistics team faced a constant problem — how to maximize container loads of this liquid cargo? If the container is overfilled, the flexitank could split, destroying tens of thousands of dollars worth of cargo, not to mention creating a rather smelly clean up job. But by underfilling the container, Talley’s generate less revenue from the shipment, plus the shipping cost per ton of payload is higher than it needs to be.
Talley’s tried using flowmeters to optimize the load, but found this was inaccurate, with air bubbles and other variables skewing the measurement. This meant they were forced to "guess" when the flexitank was full, disconnect the hose, then have the container hauled to the nearest weighbridge to check the weight. With the gross container weight, Talley’s could calculate how much capacity was left inside the flexitank.
Containers were at times under-filled by more than 2,000 liters. Once weighed, the container would be returned for the team to continue loading and to guess (again) if it was topped up to the right level. This process cost Talley’s time and money, including extra haulage costs, weighbridge fees and man-hours spent coordinating the check weighing and top up. Check-weighing away from the loading point also caused delays and meant Talley’s sometimes had to choose between knowingly shipping an under filled container, or missing a shipping cut-off-time.
The firm was already familiar with BISON C-Jacks, industrial scales for weighing grounded shipping containers, having adopted them at a number of its meat processing plants for SOLAS VGM compliance (The International Maritime Organization regulation under the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) requires shippers to provide a Verified Gross Mass (VGM) for every packed container as a condition for vessel loading.)
Talley’s logistics team quickly recognized that these portable container scales were not just a compliance tool, but an ideal solution for optimizing the weight of containerized flexitanks during loading.
