Hi there.

We’ve been working on some freight options to help clients reduce costs.

One idea we have come up with a slow boat to China option for some key South Island destinations. This could save up to 20% on bulk shipments.

Why this may be of interest:

South Island(SI) freight volume is typically 25% of the total freight volume a client sends but 50% of the freight cost. Christchurch is typically 50% of the SI volumes.

We’re working on a solution with a reasonably large NZ shipper who sends a lot of half empty 40 containers to Christchurch (CHH) from Auckland. Their product is very dense/heavy so they weight out and can only half fill the container. This means there is an opportunity to fill the other half with light freight. Most SCS clients send suitably light pallets that are less than 300kg/pallet which would work.

There will be some caveats around what we can send for example:

• pallets can not be any higher than 1.4m high,
• they can not overhang pallets (so max cubic per pallet around 1.6cbm),
• they can not weigh more than 300kg,
• must be ok to travel with food items
• standard forklift deliveries (i.e. does not apply to special deliverers, two man etc…)
• etc…

Most of these caveats will be fine for SCS clients.

The key benefit is that we will be able to offer the service for 20% less than our current, standard  rates to some key SI destinations.

The downside will be that it is a slow service – typically 5-6 working days for CHH.  The nature of the service is that we need to send out shipments in batches of 22 pallets (to fill the topstow half of the container) we have capacity to send 10 containers a day however when we are left with a part container it will be carried over to the next cycle so the 5-6 day service for these pallets would end up being 7-10 days.

The schedule for CHH would look something like this.

Option A – leave Friday week one, deliver Friday week 2

Option B – leave Mon week one arrive Tue  week two.

Most of the stock we send is time sensitive and probably this timeframe won’t work for many shipments however if there is non- time urgent stock this could be attractive to many of our clients and by establishing a schedule it may be that you can work with your customers to make it work.

We have designed the process in principle and now wanting to know if you’re interested to try this service? If you are interested or know some other business that this may work for? Please drop me a line and let me know: brad@supplycs.com

Cheers

Brad