Hello,

We are looking askance at the election nonsense happening in DRC, and are thinking about shipping around the problem, and maybe skipping Nigeria into the bargain.

I see that CMA-CGM does several West African routes that would work for this. We may fly to Aus/NZ or home if the shipment will be a long one, and we are insensitive to timing. I just prefer to know costs up front (ha ha -- as if), or at least, dealing with someone in English would be helpful.

My questions:

1. Do I use a freight forwarder for this? Does anyone have a recommendation in Cotonou? I am considering a 20' container and have Carnet in hand for the car.

2. Are there Ro-Ro or similar alternatives? I see Grimaldi is in Benin, but they only go North from there.

3. Are there better ideas for this? Can I get a South African company to "pull" the shipment out of Benin for me?

Thanks for any insight. The shipment DB here didn't turn up anything on my searches, but I may have been doing it wrong.

Cheers,

- Mike

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Hi Mike,

For option 3, speak to Adrian at Econotrans in Cape Town: he tried to do the same for us for Dubai-Cape Town, though in the end we shipped from Iran and he organised the arrival. We'll post a report on that soon.

I obviously have no idea if he can help with the Benin end, but it's worth a try.

Adrian Schultz
Director, Econo Trans
Cape Town, South Africa
Tel. +27-21-5115513.
Fax +27-21-5114707
0861-MOVING
Direct fax no: 0865107482
e-mail : adrian@econotrans.co.za
website : www.econotrans.co.za

Best of luck!
Helen

Thanks Helen. Adrian responded very quickly and professionally -- here were his comments:

So I think he's down on W. Africa for port shipping. I asked him if Accra was any better, but he's down until Jan 3 for the holiday. I'll share his reply if he does Ghana -- but I suspect not.

Back to the drawing board.

Cheers,

- Mike

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Uff, too bad!
Maybe someone else has more contacts to pass on

We spoke to someone in walvis bay as well, let me see if i can find their contacts and pass them on, too.

Best of luck in the meantime!

Hi Mike,

We spoke to (but didn't use) these people in Namibia. They were helpful but I'm not sure they will have better contacts than Econotrans, but certainly worth a try:

TRANSWORLD CARGO (Pty) Ltd.
info@transworldcargo.net
www.transworldcargo.net
Tel: +264 (0) 61 371 100

Let us know how you get on!
Helen

Thanks! I'll put them in my back pocket -- I prodded Adrian a bit, and he seems willing to work with Ghana, so we may switch our outbound port. Seems like Ghana may be less "advanced" a shipping port

We have like 5 quotes in the fire for assorted port pairings, will report back with what I find.

Frankly, Adrian has been so thoroughly responsive (sent me an email at 5am today, even though he's not in the office for another 8 days!), that I want to work a little harder to throw him the biz.

Cheers,

- Mike

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Just closing the loop on this.

We successfully shipped our car from Cotonou Benin to Cape Town ZA.

Our response rate to requests for quotes was something down around 20%. It's quite a frustrating process, doubly if your visa expiries are ticking down, and you're on junky internet connections and phone signals

The two consistently good communicators were Adrian referenced above, who was not comfortable quoting, and an outfit in Cape Town who we ultimately went with, called Maryan Holdings. They are at:

Etienne Van Ellewee
Executive, Maryan Holdings
+27 21 554 3778
etienne@maryanholdings.com

I have his cell number also, but don't feel comfortable publishing that -- he'll freely provide it on request, though.

Everything ran like clockwork, and the service level was A+ -- and not A+ by West African or even South African standard -- A+ by Western standard. After a few months in the bush, this was really refreshing.

Our 20' private container from Cotonou wound up being appx $3,300 USD, including handling and nonsense on both sides. This is for a car, mind you, and comparable to what we were quoted for a private container from New York to London. He also handled everything down to the last detail, and personally brought us to the port to unbox the car and ensure everything was in order. He's been a tremendous resource.

We plan to use him again for the next leg of our trip, too, which is Dar Es Salaam home again to Seattle. Thailand's new transit rules buggered our Asia plans, so we'll just do NZ/Australia instead with hired cars.

Feel free to ping me with specifics/questions if I can be helpful. I'll be adding him to the Hubb database as well.

Cheers,

- Mike

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