The last decade has seen the evolution of various types of floating transshipment terminals in the logistics market. These have been deployed for various purposes such as loading, discharging, lighterage of ocean-going vessels to overcome the restrictions of port infrastructures. The most common ones, however, are used for offshore loading of dry bulk cargo — mainly coal.
For mining and trading companies a successful logistic chain depends especially on its flexibility and the control that operators have on it, and optimizing the logistics portfolio through a mix of owned and outsourced assets can be the key to manage costs and promote higher import or export performance.
Such a model can offer the opportunity to increase the utilization rate of logistics assets, ensuring they are operated in a cost-efficient configuration and contributing to a higher return of the investment.
In this scenario, nowadays more often, the owners prefer to subcontract to third parties the management of transshippers, floating cranes, barges, and also of portable bulk handling equipment such as dozers.
Shi.E.L.D. Services can offer this service at all levels of the logistics chain and, because of its daily presence in the field, it has observed how portable bulk handling equipment — such as dozers — are playing a key role, especially in the performance of coal transshipment operations.
It is indeed common practice to put the dozers into the feeder barge during the transhipment activities to push the cargo towards the crane and to ensure that it can be easily grabbed at full load at every cycle. The collection of the cargo in the barge hold is performed by the dozers in a more efficient way than a 30–40t crane would do and the result of the synergy between the dozers and the cranes, which can work at their maximum capacity for a longer period of time, is an optimized transshipment cycle.
Dozers are also put into the OGV cargo hold towards the end of the loading, to avoid broken spaces and to optimize in this way the OGV loading capacity.
The optimization of this activity is fruitful from the very beginning, if it’s managed by skilled operators, or anyway by operators with long experience.
For this reason, Shi.E.L.D. Services has structured itself to propose the management of dozers as a turnkey service. The scope of the service is to offer not only the equipment, but also the dozer drivers and skilled technicians for all routine/non-routine maintenance, ensuring the efficiency and the availability of the equipment at a fixed cost for the shipowners, with the following advantages:
* faster implementation time;
* lower capital investment;
* lower operating costs; and
* higher loading/discharging rate
Shi.E.L.D. Services can count on locally based networks to provide services in a very short time. Local companies have been co-operating with Shi.E.L.D. for a very long time, and have already been assessed by its surveyors to ensure that they comply fully with Shi.E.L.D. Services’ strict safety, performance and reliability standards.