International Freight Forwarding Australia

Stockwells was approached by a large-scale renewables company that wanted more control and transparency on their project logistics. They were drowning in import paperwork, losing track of what was coming into the Australian port. This caused this particular client to spend too much time sorting out what was coming to the site and what was still in transit when that time should have been spent organising transport, if transport was required at all and on-site inductions, etc.

There was no visibility on shipping delays, customs clearance, terminal unpacking, and transport coordination to the site. Every supplier had a different agreement for the terms of trade, and it was unclear who oversaw which products to site and where to lay them down.

Stockwells has a deep understanding of how large, more complex projects work, and when dealing with renewable projects, many components are coming in from a multitude of different suppliers. 

They all funnel into the one site that may or may not be part or well established. It may have secluded or multiple laydown areas on unsealed roads with limited B-Double and truck access, and it may also have only one crane on-site to deal with all products entering the site. This adds another layer of coordination to transport and deliveries.

You have multiple freight providers who themselves work for the different companies under different shipping arrangements who are supplying their particular components to the site. All of this generally turns into a mess with long delays, futile trips and charges that were just not budgeted for, but all of which could have been avoided.

Projects are like Tetris puzzles with layers of information intertwined at different levels of the organisation and no one person has all the information required to make quick and efficient decisions. You need to understand the layers, the players and most importantly the site layout and limitations right from the beginning.

Stockwells offered this company full project administration and project coordination irrelevant of us organising the international freight for them or not. For the most part, we avoided much animosity on-site by taking the initiative and visiting the site directly, meeting with those organised with the task of accepting goods to the site. 

We ensured that the site knew who we were, whom we represented and which products we would be responsible for bringing to the site. Being mostly remote, we needed to have a good idea of limitations well in advance of deliveries. It is also good to have back up storage and crane facilities available as things change rapidly at remote sites. Rain is just never rain in the outback!

Ensuring we obtained all shipping details of the other products coming to site, including their arrival times to port and the product type, we were able to make sure our deliveries were not going to cause bottlenecks and issues, where detention allowed us some leeway.  On this particular project, Stockwells ended up with the task of coordinating all other cargo to the site due to our advanced administration techniques.   

Our administration to projects is considered advanced in that we have shipping arrival spreadsheets collated to include most other suppliers to site (if they are on hand to send to us to collate), they include full packing list delivery schedules down to what component is on what truck etc. Coordination in advance means we work out where each product is to be laid down, and we deliver according to an acceptable schedule for both the supplier of the goods, the transport companies involved and of course the renewable site itself.

We have received great feedback about our project coordination, and it has won us renewable contracts well into 2023. We understand what is required, the hard work and close contact needed and relish the challenges that the environment continually throws at us. We also coordinate all of the sea and air freight required on these projects and understand that everything is urgent, always.