Customer Success Story: When the Heat Was On Down Under

Veterinary medicine needs to be temperature-controlled, which is no problem if it’s being transported across land in a reefer truck. It’s usually not a problem even with international air freight, because insulated packaging can keep products cold to get it through most flights.

But Australia can be a challenging case, and one shipment to the Land Down Under became the type of challenge the Bestway International team relishes.

Shipping to Australia

Brought in on a shipment started by another forwarder, the Bestway team had little time to solve a tricky problem: The length of a flight to Australia would stretch the limits of the insulated containers’ ability to keep them cold.

And the destination airport did not have sufficient cooler space for a particularly large shipment of more than four tons.

So on this particular Sunday evening, Bestway export team leader Linda Reynolds got a phone call looking for help.

“There was a lot of cargo moving at once,” Reynolds says.

The cargo was shipped in Styrofoam containers and wrapped in gel packs. That sort of passive refrigeration will do the job on some pretty long flights. But by the time a flight into Sydney is over – and especially considering Australia’s hot temperatures – the product needed to get into powered refrigeration.

Reynolds and her team went to work.

“We spoke to the customs broker in Australia, and they are a bonded facility,” Reynolds explains. “So we redirected the product to the custom broker’s bonded facility as is – still on the airline pallets – and there was a cooler there with enough capacity to handle all the product.”

Bestway had to enlist the help of the airline to get the product to the customs broker’s facility, and it was that international teamwork that got the job done. Just another Sunday evening for the Bestway team.

“It’s a Sunday evening and I’m talking to the airline,” Reynolds says. “Of course it’s already Monday morning there, and you have to make sure everything’s right. But once you solve the issue, then it just becomes what everyone knows to do.”

The product was able to stay in the customs broker’s cooler until it cleared customs, at which point it was safe to transport to the customer. No product was lost in the process, and all the delivery deadlines were met.

And as always, the Bestway team enjoyed the challenge.

“It was fun,” Reynolds reports. “That’s what we love to do. We love to have a situation where we can solve the problem.”

There’s no team better prepared to do it.