In a fast-growing business, CEOs and business owners juggle a range of simultaneous actions across sales, marketing, finance, production, procurement, logistics and HR. Doing so many things together can result in stress, unproductive time management and compromise outcomes. If a business frequently imports or exports, as many businesses in Australia do, international sea freight is or should be a large part of a company’s logistics solutions. International sea freight, also know as ocean freight, incorporates multiple activities including, origin transport, international transport, customs clearance, domestic transport and documentation thus making it quite complex. If not managed properly, costs increase and customer satisfaction decreases. It can be challenging to ensure you receive the best results from international freight operations. Professional international freight forwarders in Australia bring relief by taking over the entire operation for seamless service at competitive pricing. This outsourcing can take a huge burden off a business owner’s shoulders. Alignment with these professionals is becoming very popular among business owners in Australia.

Read on to learn how a fast-growing business can benefit from an international ocean freight forwarder.

The most economic freight option

Ocean freight is a relatively cheap transportation medium and the cost reduces further when volumes increase. For growing businesses, receiving lower rates from large volumes in the initial stage can be a challenge. This means they must use more expensive services. To assist in overcoming this, an established international freight forwarder in Australia has multiple customers and larger volumes and they work with multiple shipping lines. This gives them better negotiation power, more options and better rates which are passed on their customers. For fast-growing businesses, it is a smart decision to align with one professional freight forwarder for international sea freight services.

Extensive knowledge

Using international ocean freight is not only about importing or exporting cargo from one place to another. It requires extensive knowledge of packaging, customs clearance, stuffing and documentation. Lack of knowledge negatively impacts your delivery performance and may detain the cargo, which imposes additional charges which increases your landed cost, thus affecting profits and market competitiveness. To avoid these additional costs, professional international freight providers have their global partners who keep them informed of all new regulations in their respective countries, thus proactively working to the ensure seamless movement of shipments.

Economic resources

In international ocean freight, businesses need many other resources such as warehouses, trucks, material handling equipment, and above all, professionals to manage all these. If you have not built a relationship with a professional freight company, securing access to these components together when you need them can be time-consuming and costly. Leading business owners understand that to secure these resources in-house, they will need to allocate more money and time. In most cases, they are happy to partner with international freight companies that bring all these components along with their services as a one-stop shop. This reduces complexity, energy and costs for business owners.

Professional reporting

When onboarding any new customer with regular volumes of freight, international freight forwarders set up a professional reporting structure to provide information to the business owners so they are informed of what they need to know, as per their requirements. These reports are shared regularly and any exceptions are reported separately to ensure timely follow-up and action. These reports give business owners a quick view of what is happening with their international freight shipments without having to spend too much time and energy on it. This saves time and effort for CEOs and business owners and this time can be used for other pressing parts of the business.

Additional services on-demand

Some international ocean freight shipments can have additional requirements such as labeling, bar coding, packaging, consolidating, documentation etc depending on where to or where from are they being shipped. These can bring an additional headache for CEOs and business owners along with increased cost. International freight forwarders understand these requirements and offer these services on-demand. Access to additional on-demand services provides confidence for business owners that they can rely on their freight forwarder which assists them in maintaining growth momentum of their business.

Leading CEOs and business owners with a substantial import and export component know that international sea freight services play a major role in their plans and inefficient management of their international freight will reduce their competitiveness. They know the in-house management of international ocean freight may appear economic on paper. However, it requires a substantial experience, expertise and resources to keep costs low and service levels high. Additionally, it puts an increased burden on their own time and energy to put the various parts of a freight forwarding operation together. Alignment with an international freight forwarder can reduce your overall freight cost, provide seamless operations and save their precious time and energy so they can focus on business growth.

For more than a century, BCR has continued to help small, medium and large businesses achieve an optimum logistics solution with warehousing and transportation, including air freight and sea freight services to and from the major ports including Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Fremantle (Perth).

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