TAMPA, FL — Though Seatrade Group Reefer Chartering N.V. has been in business for more than 60 years, the Curacao-based company — with North American operations in Tampa and Philadelphia — is still taking a progressive approach to business, carving out a niche in the produce industry as a leading carrier of international fresh cargo.

Operating commercially in two independent vessel pools, Seatrade is responsible for a fleet of about 100 fully refrigerated vessels ranging in size from 200,000 cubic feet to upwards of 650,000 cubic feet. A cadre of container, tank and bulker vessels is under management through the group and daughter companies operating worldwide.

Seatrade USA General Manager Howard Posner.That provides flexibility many operators simply do not have, said Seatrade USA General Manager Howard Posner. For many years, the company has been maximizing efficiency aboard its reefers by carrying containers on deck and is pursuing expansion of this mode. Equally important, Seatrade is trying to make sure its traffic is increasingly two-way, with ships laden coming and going.

“We feel we have a certain expertise when it comes to dedication to reefer cargo; we’ve been doing this for more than 60 years,” Posner said. “So rather than tell a shipper, ‘We’ll get your perishables to market at the convenience of our schedule and via our preferred ports,’ we’ll take the box directly from the port you want to load at to the port where you want to discharge and on the schedule you want. In that respect we can be much more responsive to the needs of the marketplace. It’s actually a value-added product and often we’re getting premiums for fast, direct service. It’s like comparing a taxi service to a bus. For years we’ve been doing containers in combination with under-deck from Peru, Ecuador and Costa Rica to the continent and we are providing a transit that’s easily the fastest in the industry. These are the type of trades we’re pursuing at this point.”

That said, “We certainly have had extra container capacity [for specialty or high-value products] on the larger ships in our pool for a number of years and we make ready use of that capacity. We have established trade lanes now that have regular weekly runs with upwards of 200 containers on deck to complement the full under-deck reefer capacity of the vessels. This already is a fairly sizable quantity in terms of reefer container slots. The mega container carriers continue to get bigger and bigger in terms of vessel size. This leaves an opportunity to make use of smaller ships on dedicated reefer-centric trades.

“Reefer ships have good flexibility in terms of temperature separations on board, but certainly nowhere near the flexibility of individual containers that then allow us to provide more of a grocery cart service in trades where there are a multitude of different temperature and compatibility requirements. We certainly recognize the evolution of the industry and expect to see new additions to the pool that provide even greater flexibility between containers and conventional reefer capacity — whether that’s through acquisition, conversion or new building projects.“

Rising economies in places like Chile, Peru and Mexico are making it easier to ensure two-way traffic.

“The challenge when putting together services is always, what do you do with the ship going the other direction?” Posner said. “Rising fuel prices mandate better efficiencies. You have to have this constant balance of trade back and forth between production areas and consumption areas. There’s opportunity in markets that were traditionally exporters of product and not receivers of product where you can look at two-way trades.”