NORDEN’s Dry cargo business is seeing strong demand from customers for its new parcelling service introduced last year. Parcelling means carrying multiple cargoes from different customers in different locations on one vessel voyage.
“The benefit for customers is that it’s a more competitive rate if they share the vessel with others,” says Viviane Da Rocha Gonçalves, Head of Dry Cargo Brazil. “Plus, if we combine clients on a single ship this means a big reduction in carbon emissions – so from an environmental perspective we are proud to be offering this service.”
The highly specialised service involves tight coordination between NORDEN’s international teams.
“It’s like piecing together a puzzle,” says Viviane. “We have people all over the world so we can see all the cargoes out there. It’s a complex business because it means working with a number of different charterers and brokers, and its major work to operate the ship when it arrives and ensure we have all necessary documentation and that all the clients are happy.”
The team is heavily reliant on data to know which markets to focus on for parcelling. Senior chartering manager Michael Hunter explains: “Most of the time we cannot book parcels simultaneously, therefore we have to take some risk in terms of fixing base cargoes with the expectation of finding completion cargoes to build a full shipment. Looking at past data in terms of numbers of parcels moved on a particular route, allows us to assess this risk and the probability of finding other parcels.”
Christian V. Christensen, Head of Dry in NORDEN sees big potential for the growth of the service. “This is all part of expanding our tailored services to clients. We have started parcelling from our offices in Vancouver, Rio and Santiago and we now aim to move into other geographical areas, and are actively looking at recruit specialists - either individuals or whole teams - who can join us on this journey.”
