Career
Sea freight container shipping offers the most carrying capacity at the lowest costs over long distances, even from one continent to another. Clients of the AsstrA-Associated Traffic AG international transportation and logistics corporate group benefit from comprehensive services around containerized sea freight from Italy to the United States. The process includes five steps that AsstrA makes easy for Customers.
The corporate group’s Clients take advantage of door-to-door import and export services involving the Italy-US-Italy trade lane between two main ports: Genoa and New York.
“There are five steps to successful sea shipping with AsstrA,” points out Luba Zakharava, AsstrA Italy Country Manager.
“AsstrA’s sea freight shipping services start with registering the shipping order and then move on to cover selection of the shipping line, document processing, sea shipping, and of course final delivery.”
“After receiving the sea freight order, AsstrA experts book the containers according to a Customer’s specific load plan, which might be spaced out over several weeks – sometimes one, sometimes six. AsstrA specialists take care of handling all documents, from export customs formalities to Importer Security Filing with an AsstrA agent and US import declarations. Everything is prepaid on Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) incoterms”, adds AsstrA Sales Specialist Stefano Morlini.
The wide range of AsstrA’s documentation support services even extends to prepaying all customs duties and expenses before and during carriage in the US through AsstrA agents. As Stefano Morlini emphasizes, all a Customer has to do is to send AsstrA experts the documents and approve the bill of lading. A piece of cake, isn't it?
AsstrA ships around 30 containers this way approximately every 2 months. Clients of the corporate group take advantage of the transportation of wide range for loads, as label paper, machinery, mesh pads, and filters. The cargoes are transported either as one-off projects involving one or two containers or regular shipments of up to 10 containers. The weight of the cargo in one container is around 20 tons. It is worth noting that the voyage from Genoa to New York takes 16 days.
“The United States market is a tough one to break into. The logistics operator has had early successes, but the competition is fierce with lower-priced and longer-established freight forwarders. AsstrA is pushing into the American market and working with any interested Customers to gain experience and market share,” adds Stefano Morlini.
Marco Casali, a Sea Freight & Project Cargo Division Representative at AsstrA, marks also the importance of AsstrA team work: “It is not easy nowadays to enter such an important market as the USA and fight every day to get traction and build credibility with Clients. But this team is up to the challenge. Even though AsstrA is competing with global players, in just a few months the corporate group experts have been able to steadily increase volumes. We are moving forward!”
