The excitement of a new sale or the confidence of a life long customer may blind ourselves to be prepared in the possible event of cargo damages.
Nevertheless, according to the FAO, 5% to 15% of fresh fruits and vegetables are lost or damaged during transport. In addition to the loss of our sale, a bad image with our client and the difficulty of the incident management because our cargo is in a foreign country, we need to add a new headache: insurance claims.
Causes of fruits and vegetable cargo damages.
Most of the causes of fruits damaged cargos during exports / imports have to do with:
- Bad communication with freight forwarders regarding cold chain requirements
- Lack of monitoring during transit time = lack of documentation to know what happened during transport
- Temperature fluctuations
- Delays
The common denominator of all these causes is the damage is not visible during the discharge. It may take even days, when the cargo arrives at the client’s warehouse, to discover fruits are in bad conditions.
Best practices during exports.
In order to prevent risks and avoid insurance claims to become a nightmare, we can implement some good practices to face an eventual claim in the best conditions:
- Ensure a good communication between your team and freight forwarder. Remember to clearly indicate the range of temperature (and humidity) in which your fruits must be transported and clarify the unit of measure: Celsius of Fahrenheit
- Verify the container has been pre-cooled according to your requirements and if you need to comply a Cold Treatment Process make sure your carrier is aware and can follow this specific process
- Include real time sensors to monitor the cold chain and get to know before the downloading that all requirements have been met
- Digitization to automatize your shipment’s monitoring and claim process to avoid mistakes
How can real time monitoring help me avoid cargo damages?
Shipping lines currently reject any claim received 3 days after discharge. But, as explained previously, it may take days to realize your cargo is damaged. By including real time monitoring systems, you will know before opening the container if your cargo suffered from temperature / humidity fluctuations and therefore take action in time to be sure your insurance claim is processed.
Additionally, with a real time solution you will get cold chain information sent automatically to your computer. This will save you time to focus on important tasks rather than wasting your time looking after a datalogger and download recorded data.
CLCircular is a real time monitoring service that helps you to be an efficient and successful exporter by giving you real time insights of your supply chain at a fair price.
- Check the status of your cargo in live: temperature, relative humidity, light, shocks, positioning
- Get reports at the end of your shipments
- Support your insurance claims with automatic reports with reliable data of cold chain cargo evolution
Want to know more about it? Please feel free to contact us at info@clcircular.com
