Every year, RedSheep exports hundreds of containers around the world. The majority of them are transported by marine vessels, with some freight being delivered by train.
Sea freight has increased dramatically in the last two years as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. When compared to the cost of sea freight, the difference is significant.
Many customers do not like the sudden increase. The increased prices have made it necessary to consider sea freight when making an international purchase. Customers are becoming a habit of asking for sea freight and calculating the CIF prices before confirming the orders.
In general, if FOB prices are not too high and acceptable to the customers, the total with sea freight makes it seems like a worthless purchase to import goods from China. It seems like a high investment for low profits due to the high sea freight.
To deal with such issues RedSheep is continuously working to improve its packaging and loading plan for containers. We are doing our best to come up with plans to save maximum container space to load maximum goods in a single container. It helps reduce the number of containers which eventually reduces the cost of transportation.
For example, RedSheep loaded 15 containers of standard Tego shelving recently. We applied some of our improvements within this shipment that saved space while keeping the goods safe. We are glad to inform our customers highly appreciated the experiment upon receiving the goods.
Wooden Pallet Packaging of Tegometall Shelving
The order goods are all either packed in pallets or in wooden crates. Both these options are easy to load and unload for the containers, time-saving, and fewer labor costs for Redsheep and you.
Better Packaging Materials to Protect The Tegometall Shelving
We use some plastic foam films as dividers between the products for special colors like black or gray that can easily get damaged by white scratches on the surface. This helps prevent the items from scratching each other, eventually reducing damage.
Better Loading Facilities For Better Loading Capacity
We got professional loading platforms made up of cement. The height of the platforms is kept adjacent to the height of containers with several loading doors along the edges. There’s a hydraulic lift board for each door, which can extend into the container door to work as a bridge between the container and the platform.
This allows the electric forklifts to conveniently drive into the container to unload the pallets onto the container floor safely.
Additionally, our electric forklifts are also kept professional for loading containers. They can even stack the pallets inside the containers without touching the container ceiling. With these professional pieces of equipment, it barely takes us 30 minutes to load a 40ft container. Thanks to the equipment and knowledge we can load 30 containers per day at most.
Pallet Marks For Better Identification
We put a paper mark on each pallet in addition to the marks written on each carton. Multiple pieces of information regarding the pallet and the contents inside are included in this paper. For example, product names, sizes, quantities, weights, and colors, as well as your company logo and manufacturing dates, can all be printed on the sticker if desired; ideally, all of this information is very apparent and easy to recognize and classify goods during unloading and inbound.
Pallet Number For Tracing
Different pallet numbers are marked on each component when loading each pallet. These numbers correspond to a specific pallet and are handwritten on the pallets before they are loaded into the container.
RedSheep will provide you with a loading list with this pallet number 1/2/3…, and for each number, we will attach a clear and trackable product list. This can let you examine the number of the goods or discover the right pallets of the things you want among hundreds of pallets.
Steel Corners For More Security
When we pack the pallets, we use steel corners on each pallet corner and the places where the packing belts might damage the carton edges. This protects the entire pallet at the four corners and the cartons on the pallets from damage or impact during transportation. This also prevents the packing belts from being too tight, causing damage to the carton boxes and products inside. This is particularly useful for large cartons and pallets.
Accurate Calculated Packaging of The Tegometall Shelving
To make the most of the container capacity, we made plans for different pallets and standardized the pallet width to around 750mm, as shown in the photographs below. After loading tens of thousands of containers, this is the best option we can come up with.
One pallet is approximately 750mm broad, three pallets are around 2250-2350mm wide, and the container’s internal width is approximately 2350mm wide. As a result, three pallets are stacked in one row across the containers, the overall width is extremely close to the internal width of the container, and there is very little free space between each pallet or between the container wall and pallets.
The pallets are very crammed with each other during transportation; there is nearly no shake left and right inside with the pallets; no pallets fall down; no wave of goods on top of pallets; the items are very safe. Because all pallets are the same width of 750mm, we may load different pallets with different commodities in the same row; all we need are pallets that are the same length. Actually, shelf plank back panel top covers for normal Tego shelving are all the same length, either 1000mm or 1250mm. We can simplify the loading plan and better secure the products this way.
Optimize the height of the pallets to make the most of the container height. The usual container inside height is roughly 2380mm for 20GP and 40GP. There is a plate cover as an eave at the container door, about 10cm high. We need another 50-100mm free height under the pallets while using a forklift to lift and move them. The maximum height for each pallet in a GP container is 2230mm, whereas the HQ container is 300mm taller. We must factor in GP containers when calculating the loading plan because we cannot guarantee that we will receive HQ containers from the vessel firm every time. As a result, we must keep the pallets’ maximum height within 2230mm.
However, this will result in some height waste inside the containers. For instance, if we pallet a 400 mm high back panel, we can only put four cartons on each pallet. The total height is around 1900mm, compared to the max pallet height of 2230, we will waste height of approximately 300mm, which is insufficient to fit another carton of 400mm high back panel; if we pallet 570mm wide shelf plank, we can only put three cartons on each pallet, total height is around 1950mm, compared to max pallet height.
So, to save on container shipping expenses, we make full use of the container height by stacking some cartons in the low size of other items onto existing pallets. For example, we can stack two cartons on 1950mm and 1900mm pallets, totaling close to 2200mm high. We can stack multiple low-height cartons on standard single-product pallets in this manner, bringing the total height close to the container limit and making the container appear quite full.
Satisfying Result
In order to pack this order in the beginning, we plan to use 15 40-foot containers. However, as a result of the aforesaid changes, we are now only using 13 40ft containers for this order, and each container’s weight is extremely close to the limit weight, with the majority of containers weighing about 25500kg each.
We saved 2pcs of 40ft containers, and the sea freight for a 40ft container to Europe ports is roughly USD 12000. So we saved the customer a total of $24000. This is only sea freight, with no inland or port handling fees. Hence, not only did the buyer saves money, but we, the seller, managed to make more profit. In the end, both the buyer and the seller enjoyed safe and satisfying service.
Interested in this Tegometall system? See how to layout to display with our Action store case study.
Final Verdict
Keeping the sudden rise in the cost of transportation in mind we’ve developed an efficient transportation and packaging method. This allow you to enjoy affordable imports for increased were you get to enjoy better profits.
