Long-term storage demands compromise warehouse operators

KEVIN MAYHEW A KEY area of concern for companies offering warehousing facilities to the road freight industry is that transporters are turning them into a cheap source of long-term storage. This is due mainly to the problem of a lack of cross-border traffic and unwillingness of transporters to undertake overborder work in some cases. The managing director of Shipping Consolidated Holdings (SCH), Bill Benson, said that this tendency was stretching its storage capacity and affecting its capacity to get new business into its warehouse as this cargo was absorbing space. He says it is especially problematic when the warehouse only charges for the cargo when it leaves. “We have been forced to pre-empt this by introducing definable limits, beyond which we must be financially rewarded for the additional time,” he explained. This is done by introducing a sliding scale for storage depending on the period of time the cargo stays in the warehouse. “The problem is prevalent with the handling of large parcels of cargo, in particular aid cargo. If it is held up for political or administrative reasons, you are left holding the products for months, which is way beyond what was originally agreed to and catered for in the initial costings,” he explained.