This week, BeFlexi attended the 2nd International Sunflower Oil Summit: Science & Industry, organized by APK Inform. The Summit was held in Odessa, Ukraine and attracted leading operators within the sunflower oil market from the Black Sea region, Europe, South America and Asia.

 

Bruno Silva, Managing Director at BeFlexi gave a presentation on the advantages of using flexitanks in the transportation of sunflower oil. The trend in the flexitank market is very clear. Bulk shippers are endlessly looking for opportunities to lower costs and flexitanks are proving to be an incontestable alternative to ISO tanks, IBCs and drums. As such, flexitank sales have seen a double digit growth in the last five years and no slow-down is expected in the near future.

 

Bruno spoke of the recent cyber attack on Maersk, which shut down systems across its network and left millions of customers around the world unable to process their bookings or receive deliveries. Many are still experiencing delays in response times. He also mentioned Rickmers, whose bulk vessels have a capacity of 40,000 tons and who have announced their insolvency last month. Both these situations highlight the incredible risks for shippers and logistics companies.

 

Flexitanks, however, can provide a more cost-effective and reliable alternative. Because the shipments are smaller and not tied to a particular vessel or shipping line, you can lower your financial risks. You can diversify your customer portfolio because more customers are likely to be interested if you sell smaller quantities. And you diversify your revenue streams because with regular weekly sailing schedules, you can have regular shipments and thus, regular payments.

 

 

Bruno ended with a case study of a sunflower oil customer who was loading 117,028 MT of cargo in bulk vessels in 2012. The customer slowly converted all this cargo in flexitanks and since 2015 all cargo is being shipped in flexitanks. Despite the customer’s volumes decreasing last year, the margins have increased from 2.3% to 6.5%. So this customer is now making more money with less hassle, thanks to flexitanks.

 

If you want to hear more about how you can earn with flexitanks, get in touch.

katya@beflexi.com
+357 2504 0701