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When it comes to heavy duty equipment transportation, Tuscor Lloyds explain why you shouldn’t try to boil the Ocean.

 

Tuscor Lloyds have never been your typical logistics outfit, taking on some of the most difficult and inaccessible work in the industry. When a UK Biomass plant required a door to door solution for their newly purchased Biomass Boiler, the projects team seized the challenge.
 
Having worked on similar jobs from mainland China, Tuscor Lloyds were quickly recommended for the project, which was to be the first of many throughout the summer.
 
Neel Ratti, Renewables division for the heavy transportation specialists noted that due to “the speed of growth in renewables, supply chains are different to the traditional industries we work in. Companies that contact us are looking at us to drive down supply chain costs. These savings can create more competitive economies of scale for renewable energy projects.”

 
The Kit
 
The boiler and components were consolidated into 46 pieces weighing 260 tonnes in total (the equivalent of 130 average sized cars or 52 African elephants.) The pieces consisted of one 83 ton Breakbulk item at 15 metres in length as well as 7 x flat rack containers holding the remaining Out of Gauge Cargo.
 
Due to the magnitude of the project a member of the team travelled to Changsha, Hunan Province to oversee all operations prior to the deep sea sailing. The journey began with the collection at the factory based in Changsha as 3 specialised trucks were used to load the cargo over 2 days.



All the cargo was measured on location and it was discovered that many of the pieces were not correctly declared on the packing list and immediate adjustments to the OOG permits were required.
 
But the team knew the real complications would begin when the shipment was split into two parts. The first being the Breakbulk piece, travelling 50km to the river barge load in Xiangtan harbour, whilst the remaining out of gauge pieces travelled 1,100km by road to Yangshan terminal in Shanghai.
 
Once loaded onto the barge the boiler began its epic journey along the Yangtze River – taking 2 weeks in total to travelling through Wuhan and Nanjing before arriving at Luojing port in Shanghai. Here it was transferred to the coaster for the last leg to Yangshan deep sea terminal, located in the middle of Hangzhou Bay, to meet the remaining pieces that had been stuffed in Shanghai and stored in local warehousing.

Local Knowledge
 
Many import managers will share in the pain of the events that unfolded at the offshore deep sea terminal in Yangshan, Shanghai. In shipping it is impossible to predict if and when regional customs require full or part inspection of goods and/or documentation.
 
Chinese customs declared that an ad hoc inspection was required on all of the cargo on its arrival at Yangshan terminal. To adhere to these regulations the Breakbulk cargo travelled back to another terminal in Yangshan to be strategically offloaded and then reloaded again to the coaster after inspection.

The risk of missing the mother vessel from Shanghai to Felixstowe would have been catastrophic to the schedule and so the team pulled out all the stops to ensure the cargo was not held at customs. This type of cargo is rarely seen in Yangshan and if it wasn’t for Tuscor Lloyds contacts in the area, the operation would never have been possible.