How Can You Ship Bulk Liquids?

Bulk liquid goods denote materials that can flow freely, typically unloaded and loaded from a ship using pumping stations and pipelines. Unlike bulk solid cargo, the transportation of liquid bulk occurs in specially designed flexibags to accommodate liquid materials.

These kinds of goods include food or chemicals in liquid form, for instance, natural gas and oil along with the derivatives. Specially designed flexibags for sale serve to transport the various kinds of liquid bulk under stringent measures. If you're looking to ship bulk liquid, here's how it works.

How Bulk Shipping Works

Whether you're exporting or importing bulk cargo, the process involved in bulk shipping is the same. Typically, it involves three important steps: unloading, loading, and storage. When the arrival of your bulk shipment occurs at the designated port, unloading takes place and the transportation to a storage facility occurs so you can arrange for the collection.

When exporting, you store the bulk cargo at the storage facility to await loading and transportation into the designated vessel. Storing the shipment at the port saves you the trouble of making a rushed delivery by giving you sufficient time for the loading and cargo departure.

You'll have to hire the services of a specialist company to oversee the offloading, unloading, and storage of your cargo because they entail considerable paperwork and guidelines. Such flexitank companies such as Techno Group USA help you save money and time by ironing out the tricky aspects of bulk shipping.

Transporting Bulk Liquid

Bulk liquid goods denote any kind of free-flowing liquid material. Pipelines and pumping stations serve to unload and load these kinds of bulk products. Their shipment entails a specialized flexitank to maintain liquid materials. Liquid bulk includes chemicals, for instance, petroleum, liquid nitrogen, and cooking oils.

Other materials include refrigerated goods such as fruit juice or milk. Tankers that handle the shipment of these bulk materials are typically huge vessels that can accommodate more than 400,000 tones of deadweight. If you're shipping smaller shipments of these goods individually, bulk shipping might not be appropriate.

Factors that Affect the Cost of Bulk Shipping

The cost of bulk shipping depends on four major factors, including shipment weight and size. However, costs can equally fluctuate based on various market conditions. The major factors that influence bulk-shipping costs are:

Freight class

This considers aspects such as density, the shipment's value, the vulnerability of the items to damage, and the product's handling and loadability characteristics. Fragile goods tend to have a higher classification and consequently, higher rates.

Weight and Size

These two elements combined have a high influence on shipment costs. You'll need to offer your cargo's precise measurements and weight.

Dimensional weight

The standard formula considers your shipment's density to establish shipping expenses. Transportation charges might depend on dimensional or gross weight. For instance, goods that don't weigh much but consume considerable space will use the dimensional weight to generate charges.

Distance

Although the distance at times plays a role in affecting bulk shipping charges, rates don't normally increase per mile. Rather, a complicated formula calculates rates while considering groups of destinations, origins, and the shipment type. At times, per-mile rates decrease with distance based on terminal costs and for various transportation modes.

Mistakes to Avoid During Bulk Shipping

1. The lack of equipment and material understanding

An oversight that takes place in shipping bulk liquid entails matching chemicals with unsuitable tank types. When this takes place, the damage of the tank and other equipment can arise- at times severely, in various ways.

To protect the equipment and your load, you must understand the chemical's properties fully and match it with a suitable tank. For example, you can't match phosphoric acid with a stainless tank. After all, different kinds of each exist and some might not be compatible with one another.

Too often, people neglect due diligence. To avoid this and the possibly dangerous and expensive ramifications, you should examine the following traits in a liquid bulk transporter.

Experience-you need to establish whether the carrier has previously transported your kind of product successfully

Knowledge -you should find out whether the carrier demonstrates an understanding of the involved materials, chemicals, and equipment.

The Communication-the carrier should communicate the experience and knowledge sufficiently while ensuring you have aligned needs and capabilities.

No Collaboration

For shippers, this implies making concessions such as scheduling in advance as possible and enabling broader delivery windows. For carriers, it denotes organizing schedules to house shippers whenever shippers. Too often, the spirit of collaboration is lacking and organizations can maintain their ways.

2. No Communication

An evident issue in this industry is poor communication. Instances include:

Almost non-existent interpersonal relationships

The people-to-people facet of shipment coordination is gradually losing ground. An over-dependence on digital communication could generate misinterpretations and a lack of clarity regarding the shipment prerequisites. Missing any shipment detail might lead to an irate shipper and dissatisfied shopper. Moreover, overlooking details on the bulk shipment of a major ingredient and it's possible to lose tens of thousands in the process.

Poor communication of bad news

A common shortcoming in communication is the reluctance to maintain transparency and convey negative news to stakeholders. Too often carriers and shippers find themselves unsatisfied and uninformed.  This results in mistrust, which in turn erodes communication further.

The use of old information

In a case where a shipper has contracted a carrier who's shipped products in the past, the carrier might assume that the specs are similar without consulting.

Flexibags have transformed the bulk shipping industry, resulting in efficiency. Nevertheless, you want to avoid the mentioned mistakes during transportation.