Freight forwarding, port forwarding

Freight forwarding is a very important and popular type of services used within the frameworks of international transportation. It can be said for sure that working through the freight forwarder minimizes time and money costs. If you can organize the transportation process it does not mean it is reasonable. Even if you are a major consignor or consignee, it is useful to compare your costs with the cost of forwarding services. It is likely that dealing with the main activity and not being distracted by transportation problems will be more effective. For many cargo owners working with the forwarder in most cases could help to reduce vehicles and containers downtime, especially for imported goods and forget about control of employees who are engaged in shipment. Forwarding company actually performs some of the tasks of transport logistics.

Freight forwarding involves the provision of a full complex of actions for goods delivery organization, starting from the route development and transport selection to customs clearance and products certification as well as constant control of all stages of transportation.

• Development of the optimal route and mode of transportation.
• Organization of multimodal transportations.
• Preparing of transport and accompanying documents.
• Organization of packaging, handling and storage operations.
• Preservation of goods, contracts with insurance companies.
• Cargo consolidation at a warehouse.
• Full range of services on cargo customs clearance.
• Goods certification, getting all necessary permits.
• Constant monitoring of cargo movement.
• Taking necessary urgent measures to solve the issues preventing delivery.

The cargo owner should contact the forwarding company in the following cases:

1. When the cargo should be shipped immediately. The forwarder has established contacts with various carriers, with probable advance payment on their accounts that allows not to waste time waiting for money to arrive.
2. With one-timeshipments. There is no sense to spend time learning the rules and features of transport companies.
3. At small volumes of regular shipments. It is not justified to keep special staff for shipping two-three containers weekly.
4. When shipping dangerous goods. Dangerous goods shipping is performed according to special rules and requires special registration. Besides, specially trained and certified personnel are required.
5. When shipping goods for export. The freight forwarder has trained and qualified customs declarants and, if required, temporary storage warehouses for customs cargoes.
6. During cargo transportation that requires special permits and certificates.

Port forwarding

Port forwarding is an important part of cargo forwarding by sea transport. At the moment this process comprises the following:

• Data processing referred to the expected cargo delivery;
• Determining the most optimal terminal for carried goods processing;  
• Transmissions of commercial and freight documents accumulated at liner and ship agents;
• Coordination, obtaining permissions, handling and storage of dangerous, heavy/oversized cargoes;
• Timely professional port/terminal document processing;
• Cargo separation, securing, palletizing, loading/offloading, reloading onto similar types of transport and other auxiliary loading/unloading operations;
• Arranging survey (assessment of transported cargoes);
• Arranging necessary inspections  and weighting of cargoes, including upon consignee or supervisory authorities request);
• Arranging cargo storage requiring special temperature conditions at refrigerated warehouses in the territory of Grand Port of Saint Petersburg;
• Export cargo accumulation in port terminals;
• Obtaining necessary cargo/document permissions for export from ship/liner agents;
• Arranging necessary container equipment receipt by liner agents (refers only to container cargoes);
• Arranging transported cargo receipt from terminals;
• Cargoshipment monitoring;
• In-time receipt, verification and payment of terminal invoices for the performed works as well as for extra storage time (upon receipt of payment guarantees from consignees);
• Development and implementation of custom-tailored handling technologies (varies upon client needs).

S-Logistic Company has partnerships with all major container and ferry lines in the North-West region within the long-term contractual agreements. Due to that we provide in-time and the highest quality port forwarding.