What you need to know about liquid bulk shipping

Have you ever wondered how the liquid detergent on your shelf is transported to you from the factory?

The answer is liquid transportation.

Liquid bulk shipping or liquid transit has been carried out since the early 1700s. Since then, a lot has changed in the industry. The bulk liquid shipping industry today involves magnanimous vessels, huge container trucks, and whatnot. Earlier bulk liquid shipping was done using container tanks.

With the gradual passage of time, the container tanks were replaced by the Flexitanks. Flexitanks, as the name suggests, are the flexible tanks that can hold huge volumes of any liquid. These are prominently used to transfer non-hazardous liquids all over the world. Most of the time, the liquids are from the food-grade like cooking oils, juices, wines, and sauces.

Flexitanks can easily fit very well inside a 20-foot long container. The flexitanks are a better option over the traditional drums and cans used for the transportation of liquids. Every flexitank is built to hold around 24000 liters of liquid.

The only drawback of Flexitanks is they can not be used for the transportation of chemical or industry-grade liquids because there is always a risk of harmful reactions. The flexitanks are made with a mixture of polymers and polyethylene. Thus there is a risk of these polymers reacting with the industry-grade chemicals being transported and are not suitable for transporting them.

Now let us take a look at some of the major benefits of using flexitanks for liquid bulk shipping purposes.

Benefits of flexitanks

Improved cost-efficiency

In the shipping industry, cost management is very crucial if you want your business to sustain. Also, reduced costs mean that you provide better customer support and have sufficient funds and resources for allocation at the right place in business. Flexitanks are appropriate for this purpose. With flexitanks in use, you do not need any additional drums or totes.

The entire space inside a container is utilized with the help of a flexitank. The flexitank covers up the entire space, and the need for small individual drums is eliminated.

Also, with the individual drums being eliminated, there is no need to spend on the handling of those drums. So you also get the opportunity to save the handling costs. You can instead use these savings to upscale your business and increase the service offerings for your customers.

Increased speed

With greater efficiency, flexitanks also provide the benefit of increased speed in liquid bulk shipping. As discussed earlier, flexitanks replace the traditional drums and containers used for the transportation of bulk liquid.

These drums need to be filled with liquid and then covered. Every single unit of these drums needs to be properly covered and clamped to ensure that the liquid does not spill midway through the transportation. And then comes the loading and unloading part of these drums.

They also add up to the turnaround time of every liquid container. But with flexitank, you need to fill up the entire container just once, and you are ready to go. As the tanks are made up of polymers, the chances of liquid spilling out of the container are meager. Also, the container gets emptied quicker than the drums and totes. Flexitanks are poured out directly into the storage area.

No need for extra costs

With the drums and totes, you need to invest in their storage and their maintenance. They need to be cleaned on a regular basis, and also the drums and totes may get corrosive over time if they get exposed to any chemical oxides.

Flexitanks, on the other hand, are made for single use. They are for use and throw purposes. But this does not mean that flexitanks add up to the piling waste of this planet. Flexitanks are 100% recyclable. In addition to that, you would not be needed to pay extra charges to ship back flexitanks. You can book a one-way journey for the flexitanks for its destination.

Zero risks of contamination

The risk of contamination with a flexitank is almost zero. Like every time a new flexitank is used for bulk liquid transportation, there is no chance that leftover materials from the previous shipment may contaminate the present liquid. Thus flexitanks are suitable for the transportation of food and pharmaceutical liquids. Most commonly shipped liquids in flexitanks are:

Wine
Milk
Cooking oils
Motor oil
Industrial oil
Paints
Chemicals
Liquid coolants
Biodiesel
Glycerin
Sauces
Adhesives
Beer
Shampoo
Liquid detergents
Cosmetic liquids

This is not a comprehensive list as there are a plethora of other things that are transported via flexitanks. This list gives an idea of how versatile the flexitanks can be.