Arrival of Shipping Containers – The Journey from Egypt to the Port of Cape Town, to the LecicoSA Warehouses
Step 1
Saskia de Lange, Procurement Manager for Lecico South Africa, places product orders with our Lecico factories in Egypt.
Step 2
Lecico Egypt books shipping containers (that will contain our products) on a cargo merchant ship.
Step 3
Our products are loaded into the shipping containers and placed on the ship in the Port of Alexandria (Egypt), ready to start their international journey.
Step 4
he ship that has the Lecico containers on it first travels 3 665 nautical miles from Alexandria, Egypt, to Antwerp, Belgium (in Europe), to drop off containers for European companies and customers.
In Antwerp (Belgium), the cargo merchant ship offloads ALL of the containers, and the containers have to be checked by Customs.
The containers that contain the Lecico products are then loaded onto ANOTHER ship – a ship that will travel all the way to Africa.
Step 5
As soon as the weather conditions are suitable, and as soon as the ship’s captain has received permission from the Port Authority, the ship then departs from Belgium and starts its 6-week journey of 7 233 nautical miles to Cape Town, South Africa.
Step 6
About 4 days before the cargo ship arrives in Cape Town, Lecico SA’s Clearing Agent lets us know that the ship is close by, and that we can start getting things ready.
As the ship comes into Cape Town, it might have to wait for a period of time before it is allowed into the port, and before it is allowed to start offloading.
Bad weather, especially wind, can cause terrible delays for cargo shipping. It is not safe for too many ships to be in the harbour during bad weather, and it is absolutely not safe for ships to start offloading their containers in bad weather.
For very big ships, there is no “safe haven” in a storm. In a harbour, the ships are at the mercy of the forces of nature without being able to manoeuvre. The risk of damaging or destroying the ship as well as the valuable port facilities is high. That’s why some ports even ask that ships leave port BEFORE a storm arrives. During a storm, the safest place for a container ship to be is out on the open sea.
Step 7
When the ship is given permission, it starts to offload ALL its containers.
[A cargo ship can carry more than 3000 shipping containers!]
While the ship is offloading its containers, LecicoSA has a Transporter with trucks waiting to receive our containers.
But first, all containers are subject to a random inspection by Customs. This can take anything up to 10 days!
The harbour is very busy with all the different Transporters waiting to receive containers to go into their trucks.
Step 8
Finally, our trucks are loaded with our containers, and they drive to our warehouse in Bellville. Our entire Warehouse Team, under the leadership of our Warehouse Manager, Marius Fritz, is on stand-by to welcome the trucks and to receive our important goods.
All containers are thoroughly checked and inspected before AND after they are opened. We take quality very seriously!
Some lucky customers will soon be receiving their LecicoSA stock – I’m sure that they are very excited!!!
Who we are
Established distribution network in most African markets
2 Year guarantee on seats
After sales service & availability of spares
Added duty & logistical savings in many African countries
Extensive range of leading edge designs
National distribution footprint
