This was a particular testing shipment; 38 pieces of oilfield drill equipment at over 20 metres in length, with a total tonnage of 447 MT and a volume of 792 cbm for shipment from Montrose, Scotland to Singapore.

Under normal circumstances this would be shipped on our conventional liner services, however our client was contractually tied into a delivery deadline which did not allow them this option, given a lead time of just 4 weeks from start to finish others would have dismissed this as impossible, not us, we thrive on the "impossible" and quickly got to work with our marine surveyors, Port authorties and vessel planners on how to stow this cargo on a cellular vessel which could offer us the 17 day transit time needed to stand a chance of meeting our clients deadlines.

Given the size of the joints and the sheere volume to move, trucking the cargo to the Port of loading would have been costly in both time and money, so we looked at sea transportation and within 72hrs of receiving the booking from our client we were loading the cargo into a small coaster vessel which we chartered to take the cargo across to Rotterdam Port.

Our Window was only 8 hours from arrival of our chartered coaster to loading all cargo on board the waiting mother vessel, astonishingly this was achieved with relative ease thanks to the carefully pre-planned stowage of the cargo and the close liasion withy the vessel operator and Port Authorities. All 38 riser joints were succesfully loaded and braced across a platform of 17 x 40ft flat racks and arrived in Singapore well inside our clients deadline. Another job well done.