About
The Ability to Deliver
Since our founding in 1990, Intermarine has specialized in the transportation of heavy and over-dimensional pieces. We have built a diversified fleet with a score of vessels capable of lifting more than 100 metric tons, and can handle self-sustaining lifts of more than 400 metric tons. We have transported pieces 300 feet long as well as structures seven stories high. But our ability does not end on the ocean. Today, Intermarine is an integrated transport company offering point to point delivery for pieces of almost any size or weight. We have taken projects up the Amazon’s tributaries into the jungles of Ecuador on streams with less than one-meter depth. From Europe to the Mid-East, we have completed the intermodal movement of refraction columns weighing 1200 metric tons. In Venezuela, we have invested heavily and now posses the most complete project/heavy lift logistics service in the country. We have grown beyond a shipping company and now offer the equipment and expertise to perform most any move, anywhere.
Although the tremendous growth of Intermarine is a source of organizational pride, it is our vision for the future that drives us to provide unequaled service. This vision is to build a transportation organization that provides project shippers a frequency, reliability and scope of service on land and water that allows projects to move on a “just-in-time” basis anywhere in the world. The ability to provide project cargoes the opportunity to move on an as needed basis cannot be built using traditional, structured services. It requires an organization that is designed to anticipate change rather than follow routine. It requires an approach to resource acquisition based on fitting ships and equipment to the immediate cargo requirements rather than building a permanent, long term fleet with inflexible capabilities. In short, it requires a higher commitment to meeting customers’ needs than to the structured deployment of a fixed fleet of vessels or equipment.
We believe that our vision of service first and ships second is unique among today’s shipping companies. Although large shipping companies will claim that ships are tools needed to service their customers, their long term financial commitments to vessels require them to structure services to keep their vessels employed. Thus they focus on finding cargo to fill ships rather than finding the right ship to move the cargo. On the other hand, small companies, which may not have a long-term position in vessels, are by their very size precluded from continuous participation in the world charter market for vessels or access to sufficient cargoes to allow for frequent changes in scheduling.
Responsiveness to the project cargo market requires a flexibility that conflicts with the traditional shipping service structure. Intermarine was founded not by a man with links to mainstream shipping, but by a man that spent his career trying to move projects. In two decades, we have become the dominant project cargo carrier to Asia and the North Coast of South America. This was not accomplished by constructing a regimented service, but by providing service as and where needed. Industrial vessels do not sail on an arbitrarily scheduled day; they sail when the cargo is ready.
Viewing vessels as a commodity rather than an overhead allows Intermarine to customize voyages around specific cargoes—matching the right ship to the available cargo. Of concern is not what ship a given cargo is aboard, but whether the cargo safely moves when it should. Pride is found not in the maintenance of a vessel’s schedule, but in the preservation of a project’s schedule. The acceptance of this approach has allowed Intermarine to establish a frequency of service that allows project cargo to move in multiple parcels rather than a single large lot.
For example, our South American service sails up to four vessels a week, but the itinerary of each voyage is only determined when the cargo volumes are known. This allows us to construct itineraries that insure time sensitive cargoes arrive when needed. It also provides a greater utilization of each vessel than what would have been achieved by arbitrarily assigning cargo to a pre-scheduled vessel. Although some carriers believe that without a rigid schedule regularity cannot be maintained, Intermarine has proven that flexible voyage construction provides both weekly regularity and unsurpassed responsiveness.
We have used this same customer focused approach to offer services beyond the deep-sea vessel. In Venezuela, we have in place a flat deck heavy lift barge and tug for shallow coastal and inland waterway movements. We also have a complete array of inland, heavy-haul transport equipment (including SPMT’s) for delivery to the job site. Lastly, we are able to provide crane services to erect the project. This expertise and capabilities can also be made available anywhere in the world.