Talley's optimizes fish oil flexitanks while loading
Talley's
Talley's export quality seafood, meat, dairy and vegetable products.
The company's seafood division - Amaltal Deepsea - runs a fleet of deep sea fishing vessels equipped with automated processing facilities. Fish are processed on-board within hours of being caught. Everything is utilised, including fish waste, which is converted into high grade by-products such as fish meal and oil.
Discharging the fishing vessels and delivering this valuable cargo to market involves careful logistics planning and execution.
Flexitank Payload Struggles
For fish oil exports, Talley’s use a pump and hose to discharge the oil into 24,000 litre, containerised flexitanks. Talley’s on-shore logistics team faced a constant problem - how to optimise container loads of this liquid cargo?
If the container is overfilled, the flexitank could burst, destroying tens of thousands of dollars worth of cargo. But by underfilling the container, Talley’s generate less revenue from the shipment, plus the shipping cost per tonne of payload is higher than it needs to be. Talley’s tried using flow meters to optimise the load, but found this was inaccurate, with air bubbles and other variables skewing the measurement. This meant Talley’s were forced to guess when the flexitank was full, disconnect the hose, then have the container hauled to the nearest weighbridge to check the weight.
With the gross container weight, Talley’s could calculate how much capacity was left inside the flexitank. Containers were at times underfilled by more than 2,000 litres. Once weighed, the container would be returned for the team to continue loading and to guess (again) if it was topped up to the right level! This process cost Talley's time and money, including extra haulage costs, weighbridge fees and man-hours spent coordinating the check-weighing and top up. Check-weighing away from the loading point also caused delays and meant Talley’s sometimes had to choose between knowingly shipping an under-filled container, or missing a shipping cut-off time.
Bison Container Scales
Talley’s were already familiar with Bison Container Scales, having adopted them at a number of their meat processing plants for SOLAS VGM compliance. Talley’s logistics team quickly recognised that Container Scales were not just a compliance tool, but an ideal solution for optimising the weight of containerised flexitanks during loading.
The portability of Container Scales means they can easily be moved to different docks where vessels are discharged. Container Scales allow the empty container and flexitank to be weighed before loading, giving Talley’s a precise tare weight and a precise target for optimizing the container payload. Container Scales mean the container can be weighed in realtime during loading, allowing the supervisor to gauge loading progress and most importantly, identify exactly when the flexitank is full.
Optimized Payloads & Increased Profitability
By adopting Bison Container Scales, Talley’s are now optimising container loads of fish oil at the point of loading, meaning each container shipment is now more profitable. With fish oil sold by weight, revenue is maximised with each shipment and earnings are realised sooner. Shipping costs are reduced in two ways. Firstly, the haulage costs, weighbridge fees and labour costs from check-weighing the container are eliminated. Secondly, in the course of a year, more cargo is shipped using fewer containers, reducing Talley’s net shipping costs per tonne of cargo by approximately 10%.
Being portable and trade approved, Talley's also use Container Scales to weigh container loads of tuna, fish meal and other export fish products. These weights are used for transacting cargo by weight and for SOLAS VGM compliance. This saves Talley’s at least $20 per container in weighbridge fees. It also reduces the time and distance travelled by Talley’s trucks, by not having to visit a weighbridge en-route to port.
