Resumen de A moveable feast? - The logistics and options of mineral transportation
With the advent of containerisation (see below), shipping lines took responsibility of the goods at an earlier stage, which saw the transfer of responsibility moved ashore. The shipper no longer delivers the goods'under the hook', but to the carriers' container freight station (CFS) for consolidation and packing into the container, or the shipper packs its goods into a container at its own premises.
Containerisation, a system of freight transport using standard-sized steel containers, is a fairly new development. Larger buyers had previously preferred bulk carriers to transport minerals. These carriers had separate compartments, so, for example, if there were five compartments each of 10,000-tonne capacity, 50,000 tonnes of minerals could be carried to destination. This was found to be the cheapest method and containers were considered to be too expensive. But now, due to depressed international trade, ocean freight rates have come down to bare minimum and there is not a significant cost difference between the two methods of transport.
For minerals such as dolomite, limestone and fuel minerals, a bulk carrier would be cheaper, provided there is a single consumer with a well equipped and good infrastructure facility at the offloading point to handle the bulk cargo. Power plants, cement plants and steel plants are good examples of such type of cargo movements where the logistical cost is the cheapest. There are also savings in the packing cost, as minerals are moved in bulk in compartments and directly stored in loose form at the final destination at the importing company's manufacturing site.
