Warehousing & Distribution

Storage that is actually managed

A warehouse is only as useful as its records. Space to put cargo is easy; knowing exactly what is held, in what condition, and being able to release the right items against an order without a physical search is the part that matters. We record cargo in and out and reconcile it, so a stock query is answered from the system rather than by sending someone to walk the aisles.

That discipline is what lets storage do real work — holding safety stock near a port so you are not exposed to a single late sailing, staging a large import for phased delivery, or consolidating several suppliers’ goods before they ship on as one.

Distribution built on your inbound freight

Because we handle the freight as well as the storage, the two join up. Cargo we clear can go straight into managed stock; stock we hold can be picked and dispatched onward without a second company in the loop and without your goods being handed across a gap where accountability tends to disappear. One team owns the cargo from the port to the final delivery.

Knowing what you actually have

Stored stock is only useful if the number in your system matches the pallets on the floor. Most inventory problems are not theft or damage — they are receiving errors, mislabelled cartons and dispatches recorded late, each small on its own and jointly enough to make a stock figure untrustworthy at exactly the moment you need to rely on it.

Goods are booked in against the inbound documents when they arrive, discrepancies are raised the same day rather than at month end, and stock is cycle counted on a rolling basis so errors surface in days instead of at an annual count. You get a stock position you can plan against, and when something does not add up you hear it from us with the receiving record attached.

Because the same team handles your inbound freight, the warehouse usually knows a consignment is coming before it arrives — which sounds obvious, and is exactly the handover that goes wrong when the freight forwarder and the warehouse are two different companies emailing each other.

Bonded storage and deferring the duty

Imported goods do not always have to be duty-paid the moment they land. Deposited into a customs bonded warehouse, they sit under bond with the duty suspended, and it falls due only when they are taken out on an ex-bond bill of entry — in the quantities you actually need, when you actually need them. For an importer bringing in a full container against demand that will materialise over several months, that is the difference between paying duty once on everything and paying it in instalments as the stock earns its keep.

It also opens doors that duty-paid stock closes. Goods can be re-exported from bond without the duty ever being paid, which matters if the final destination is not settled at the time of import. Manufacturers with heavier requirements usually end up looking at the warehouse manufacturing scheme, where duty on imported inputs is deferred and, on the portion that is subsequently exported, does not become payable at all.

The honest caveat is that bond is not free. There is a bonding procedure, a warehousing bond, conditions on how long goods may remain and interest that can accrue beyond a period, and the record keeping is heavier than ordinary storage because customs has an interest in every movement. Below a certain volume the administration outweighs the cash-flow benefit, and we will tell you when your numbers fall on that side of the line.

Storing goods through an Indian monsoon

Humidity is the thing that damages stored cargo in India, and it does it quietly. Cardboard loses a meaningful share of its compression strength as relative humidity climbs, so a stack that was stable in February starts to lean in July. Unprotected steel and bright machined surfaces take surface corrosion. Leather, natural fibres and anything with an organic adhesive grow mould. Sealed plastic wrap, applied to stock that was warm when it was wrapped, traps moisture against the goods and does more harm than leaving it open.

The countermeasures are unglamorous and they work: everything up on pallets rather than on a slab that wicks moisture, gangways kept clear so air moves, desiccant in containers and in wrapped consignments, volatile-corrosion-inhibitor film on bare metal, and stock rotated so nothing sits at the bottom of a stack for a whole season. Before the rains, the roof, the gutters, the drainage and the dock seals get checked — after the first heavy week is too late to discover a gutter is blocked.

The same season is when pest pressure peaks. Wooden pallets and crates should be heat-treated and marked to ISPM 15 in any case for export, and there is a good argument for holding to the same standard on domestic stock simply because untreated timber brings insects into a building that also holds cartons. Where food-grade or pharmaceutical stock is stored, segregation and baiting discipline stop being paperwork and start being the reason a consignment is still saleable.

How storage is quoted

Two numbers drive a warehousing quotation and they behave very differently. Storage is charged on the space actually occupied — pallet positions if the goods palletise cleanly, floor area if they do not — and it accrues quietly whether anything happens or not. Handling is charged on movement: goods in, goods out, and any value-added work such as labelling, re-palletising, kitting or checking. For slow-moving stock the storage line dominates the bill. For fast-moving stock the handling line does, often by a wide margin, which is why a rate quoted per pallet per month tells you almost nothing on its own.

To price it properly we need the pallet dimensions and whether the goods stack, the number of receipts and dispatches in a typical month, whether orders go out as full pallets or picked cases, how long stock typically sits, and the gap between your average month and your peak one. That last figure is the one most people leave out and the one that decides whether space has to be held in reserve for you or can be shared.

What we will not do is quote a headline rate and recover the difference in handling. The quotation itemises storage, handling and any additional work separately, so you can see which part of your operation is actually costing money — and, occasionally, so you can see that the answer is to change how the goods arrive rather than where they are stored.