Innovative cargo handling

To reduce freight costs, all bulk cargo for south Greenland is gathered at the Port of Thyboron, so it can be shipped to Greenland in a single shipment.

It is well known that freight costs are best optimised by sea. If you fill up a vessel, the shipping costs are minimal. It takes a lot of goods to fill up a cargo vessel. Gathering the cargo at the port over time before it is all shipped to its final destination presents good opportunities for optimising the freight.

This is exactly the model that 60° North Greenland ApS, a Greenlandic company, uses. They gather a large number of big bags of bulk goods and pallet goods at the Port of Thyboron. Fertilizer, seed, lime, feed concentrate, fish meal, hay and much more – all the goods needed by agriculture to grow crops and raise sheep – are transported to the Port of Thyboron by trucks from various producers in the local area. Everything has been stored safe and dry in quayside warehouses at the Port of Thyboron.

The freight to Greenland is a major cost element, so it makes sense to optimise the logistics by gathering all the cargo going to agriculture in Greenland in a single shipment, thereby keeping the freight costs to an absolute minimum. The Port of Thyboron’s location right beside the shipping route towards Norway and then north of the UK, and the many suppliers of agricultural products in close proximity to the port help to further reduce freight costs and increase profitability for 60° North Greenland’s agricultural logistics project.

Thyborøn Stevedore A/S has been responsible for handling the goods at the port, with the right combination of quayside warehouses, MAFI trailers and various forklifts, all of which ensure big bags and pallets can be efficiently and easily handled at the port.

Given that only one trip is made each year, it is crucial to ensure that nothing is missing, that the quality of the goods is as expected, and that everything is properly packed before it is sailed off for delivery to agriculture in Greenland. This requires good logistics coordination.

Some of the goods are delivered en route, which places great demands on the planning. The cargo is packed very systematically, based on the type of goods and where on the route it is to be delivered. During loading, Thyborøn Stevedore systematically moves the goods to the quay in a carefully planned order, to make it as easy as possible to load the cargo vessel in line with the delivery schedule. As Daniel Svenningsen says, “the crane has to run continuously while the ship is in port to be loaded.”

It is a pleasure to witness how well the cargo segment is serviced at the Port of Thyboron, with storage facilities and optimised handling of bulk goods. The fact that the expanded storage capacity at the port makes it possible to gather the right quantities and make full use of the cargo vessel capacity, sending all the freight to a final destination in one shipment, simply gives customers excellent opportunities to exploit.

It is a pleasure to work with 60° North Greenland ApS on this cargo project, and to meet the energetic young Greenlanders from the company, who have the same solution-oriented focus that you find at the Port of Thyboron.