Challenges of delivering over land and sea

September 27, 2011

It’s an awesome responsibility for Purchasing Manager Collin Baim and his small team of assistants, drivers and crew of NCS’ Raibus Challenger to deliver and store at least a month’s worth of supplies on site at Kurumbukari and Basamuk project sites for client Ramu NiCo.

An indication of some of the volumes of basic ingredients required to provide 270,000 meals per month at these sites include:

• 25 tonnes of beef
• 20 tonnes of pork
• 20,000 chickens
• 2 tonnes of small goods
• 300,000 eggs
• 20 tonnes of rice

That’s quite a shopping list!

The added complexity is that 60% of our customers at these two sites are Chinese nationals requiring traditional Chinese meals. To provide this specialised service, NCS employs specialist Chefs from China to train National Chefs in techniques and Chinese cuisines. Certain ingredients must also be imported direct from China.

“It’s a very challenging job. We are a close team and with patience, organisation, good communication and above all, consistency, we work together to ensure that we keep track of containers at sea from Australia & Asia, and in turn, deliver goods to sites.” said Collin who is based at Madang in PNG’s Rai Coast.

“We try to have a month’s worth of stock on site at any given time as both locations are remote and have great challenges transportation wise. Also, communicating with suppliers from overseas and locally who don’t speak English well is another challenge.” he said.

Containers often arrive from Asia and Australia at either Basamuk or Madang, and then travel again by sea and/or road to site.

Overland to Kurumbukari: 75km inland in a verymountainous region only accessible by four wheel drive vehicles from both Lae and Madang. Last wet season the road was cut in many places but we met the challenge head on and kept supplies up to the site in all weather even involving dugout canoes to ford the flooded Ramu river. It was an NCS vehicle that got through first after flooding.

Across the sea to Basamuk: 56km from Madang across the often rough seas of Astrolobe Bay. There is no road access. The NCS Raibus Challenger (barge) is the key vessel with its capacity to transport cargo and passengers to and from site. It is able to cope in all seas and weather and is a vast improvement from using local vessels in the early days of the project.

Local growers supply produce daily

Another arm of our supply chain at NCS Raibus is the local purchasing team over on the Rai Coast at Basamuk. It’s quite a sight to see each morning as a steady stream of banana boats arrive at Nutlau Beach from various destinations along the coast bringing their fresh produce to the site. Some of the growers travel up to 8 hours by boat each way just to supply the site!

Ably led by Douglas Sibi from Ganglau, the team liaise with more than 50 – 80 clan groups, landowners and growers spread throughout the Rai Coast all the way to the border with Morobe Province to keep the kitchens stocked with fresh produce daily.

Each month the team receives and processes around 120 tonne of fresh fruit and vegetables which are meticulously checked for quality and weighed before being distributed to the projects. Locally grown crops include: banana, egg plant, kaukau, pokchoi, chinese cabbage, tomatoes and capsicum.

Well done to NCS purchasing and supply teams around PNG. The job that you do is so important to our operations – we do nothave a business without you doing your work
so well.

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