Shipping Solid-Liquid Separation Equipment Across Oceans

It’s summertime, and it’s a chance to look out over the beach at the ocean. While this is calming, I find it also takes me back to my interest in sea freight. I’ve been involved with shipping large and heavy solid-liquid separation equipment as well as dryers, mixers, and recycling machines across the vast ocean. These units, installed, can be up to 80 feet long and over 40 tons. That makes shipping them quite a task.

When all goes well, no one has any questions.? However, when things do go awry, that’s when your shipping company must shine. In my experience, I’ve seen the shipping company take remarkable action in times of crisis. In one case, some of a pharmaceutical company’s crates made it to North America while three of the crates ended up in India. Our shipping group kept in contact with the sea freight company, customs in German and in India, and of course, me and the client. Heroic actions were undertaken to get the crates to their end American destination, and the client still achieved the start-up with no delays.

In another case, the shipment was so critical that our shipping company organized multiple trucks so that if one broke down. That way we could ensure we’d be able to transfer the freight and still meet the necessary boat.

Shipping is seldom simple

Seeing how fundamental a role shipping plays in the success of our projects, I developed more of an interest in the field. There are a lot of books , both fiction and non-fiction, about shipping. The Shipping Man , by Matthew McCleery, is a thriller about a New York City hedge fund manager who decides to buy a ship thinking that he can make high profits because, well, how hard can it be to ship crates.? Between pirates on the sea and Wall Street to shipping magnates, he loses it all.

In the more serious non-fiction, Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy , Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel investigate the murder of a maritime surveyor working for Lloyd’s of London. David Mockett uncovered the criminal side of international shipping while inspecting the explosion of the oil tanker Brillante Virtuoso in the Gulf of Aden. The book explores financial fraud in the shipping industry while trying to solve the murder.

Most shipping stories don’t make headlines. Still, many serious stories are “floating around” (I didn’t want to say that) about loss of life, loss of goods and profits, impacting consumers and industrial operations. The most recent being on March 26, 2024, when the Dali lost power and crashed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse into the Patapsco River.? You may also recall the 2021 blocking of Egypt’s Suez Canal by The Ever Given, the 2022 sinking of the Felicity Ace cargo ship with 4,000 luxury cars, or even the 2012 cruise boat Costa Concordia grounding at Isola del Giglio, Tuscany. These all made us think anew about safety on the seas.

Beach reads and fresh perspectives

You might still want to stare out at the boats on the ocean this summer and zone out. At least take a few days not to worry about shipping solid-liquid separation equipment! You probably deserve the R&R. If you’re looking for a beach read, you might pick up the two books I mentioned here. But, while watching the tides come in, I found myself thinking of the ocean in a different way this month. I encourage you to do the same. I’m sure you’ll have some interesting thoughts come to mind. Contact me and let me know!