Leonard Neill FOURTEEN CONTAINERS loaded with specially designed firebricks from Europe made their way across the breadth of southern Africa in a record delivery time to a Richards Bay consignee last month. Now Namibian Ports Authority (Namport) is satisfied it can beat the record time of any consignment from Europe destined for the east coast of South Africa. “It shows the value of our logistic services and the quality of trucking organisations from Walvis Bay,” says Paul Wolff, Manica Group Namibia’s senior general manager logistics. The first nine containers arrived in Walvis Bay aboard the MACS vessel Grey Fox on a Saturday evening and were discharged immediately and hauled to Rennies Consolidated warehouse facility early the next morning. There they were devanned under customs’.supervision and loaded on to Wesbank Transport long haul vehicles. Customs passed them and the vehicles were dispatched, arriving in Richards Bay on Wednesday afternoon where they were offloaded in a sound condition. “It took exactly four days to complete the action,” says Wolff. Five further containers arrived aboard MACS’ Golden Isle the following Monday afternoon. The consignee had elected not to have the containers devanned, but to have them trucked through to Richards Bay. Wesbank Transport took delivery of them as soon as they were delivered to the vessel’s discharge container stack. After customs verification of the seals they were dispatched on the vehicles through the Walvis Bay weighbridge station. The trucks passed through the South African border at 20h00 on the Tuesday evening and were delivered intact to the consignee early Thursday morning.
