Pre-shipment and Export Fumigation

What this covers

Treatment of a consignment before it leaves, whether that is the goods, the packaging, the pallets or the container they are loaded into. It applies to agricultural commodities, dried foods, timber and wood packaging, and to manufactured goods packed in materials that carry a risk.

The work itself is the same fumigation described elsewhere on this site. What is different is that it is scheduled against a despatch date and documented for somebody who was not there to watch it.

Getting the requirement right first

Destination requirements are set by your buyer and by the authorities at the receiving end, and they are not the same everywhere. Before anything is booked we need to know what your consignment is actually required to have, in writing, from the party that will be checking it.

This is the step that goes wrong most often. A treatment carried out correctly but documented differently from what the receiving end expects can still cause a problem at the far end, and by then the container has sailed. Send us the requirement and we will tell you plainly whether we can meet it, rather than assuming and leaving you to find out.

Safety and access

The consignment is sealed, placarded and kept under control for the exposure period, then ventilated before release. Nothing is opened early to make a booking. If the shipping window is tight, that has to be built into the schedule at the start, because the exposure period is not adjustable once the job is running.

How long it takes

Work backwards from the vessel, not forwards from today. Sealing, exposure and ventilation together take more than a working day, and the consignment then still has to reach the port. We would rather turn down a job that cannot be done properly in the time available than run a short exposure and hand you a record of a treatment that did not work.

What you receive

A written record of the treatment: what was treated, quantity and description, the container or stack identification, the dates and times of the exposure period, and confirmation of ventilation before release.

Tell us at quotation stage exactly what document your buyer requires and what it must state, and we will confirm what we can provide before you commit to a shipping date. Getting that clear early is the difference between a smooth despatch and a container sitting at the far end.

What you need to prepare

The commodity and packaging details, the quantity, the destination, the container number if it is allocated, your despatch deadline, and the written requirement from your buyer or their agent. The earlier the last of those reaches us, the more useful the rest of the conversation is.